With at least 30 municipal employees accepting buy-out packages and several more resigning or retiring from local government, there are plenty of new faces at Village Hall. Public Works Director Bill Porter and Chief Financial Officer Dan Wiersma will be gone by July 1. Former Budget Director Al Zachowski has left to take a similar job in his home town, Lake Zurich. Purchasing Agent Bill Sarley retired, and his replacement was such a short-timer that no one at a village news conference could recall how he spelled his name!
Village Manager Todd Hileman, who positioned the buy-out program as a cost-saving measure, has recently added five new people to the management team. Among them, Dane Mall who will fill a new position – Risk Manager. He spent more than a decade working in that field, most recently for Lake County. He has a masters degree in public administration from Roosevelt University and is president of the Illinois Chapter of the Public Risk Management Association. He’ll earn $90,000 per year.
Director of Budget and Performance Measurement Jessica Rio has spent the past 12 years with the city of Chicago. Village Hall says she was director of performance management at the Office of Budget and Management, but as recently as 2005 news accounts describe her as spokesperson for the Chicago Department of Environment. She’ll be responsible for overseeing the village’s annual and five-year operating budget. Her salary: $115,000 per year.
Thirty-year-old Molly Talkington is described as a senior budget analyst. She comes from Naperville where she served as a budget analyst from 2004-2007. Like Manager Hileman, Talkington has a masters in public administration from Northern Illinois University.
And then there’s Michele Reynolds, the new purchasing agent, who will get $90,000 per year. She claims 18 years of experience in government purchasing, served as principle purchasing officer for Lake County and also worked for the Rockford Housing Authority.
Meanwhile, top managers at the Hall are changing chairs. Chris Clark, Deputy Manager, has surrendered direct oversight of the department of public works to Acting Director Jerry Burke who will report to Clark.
Joe Kenney is now director of Capital Development. He’ll report to Don Owen, who’s been promoted to deputy manager and will oversee operation of the village manager’s office and capital projects. Both Clark and Owen earn $140,000 a year.
Editor’s note: Organizations often replace highly paid, experienced staffers with younger people who cost less, but we suspect the Village Manager’s claim of saving taxpayers’ money is a pretty slim fig leaf. The village is now predicting it will save $5-$7 million over five years. Thirty people have retired, but ten have been hired.
We recently asked Village Hall to help us understand changes in the finance department for example. We noted that in 2007 there were 17 employees: a finance director, an assistant director, a budget manager, an internal auditor, a purchasing agent, a senior financial manager, an accounting supervisor, an accounting clerk, three part time employees as well as three seasonal part time personnel or “paper shredders.” Their salaries totalled $1,489,241.
We wondered who was doing which jobs today and how much they were making. Once upon a time we could have found that information in the annual audit, but for some reason those details are no longer included.
Village spokesperson Janet Spector Bishop said it would take a few days for her to round up the numbers. She suggested we read “Lynne [Stiefel’s] excellent article in this week’s Announcements. It does a great job of contexting what we’re trying to do, i.e., moving toward a business model for our organizational structure.”
Spector Bishop also e-mailed charts showing that the village will ultimately have 16 employees in finance and save an estimated $216,000 per year.
Since the village has hired an outside consultant to assist with IT functions related to finance, we wonder if that saving is real, and we worry about our local newspaper when the P.R. person at Village Hall starts singing its praises. Are the reporters at the Announcements really digging and providing context or just passing along platitudes from the Village Manager? Note that Spector Bishop did not recommend reading the Glenview Journal. Its reporter, Tom Robb, summed up the situation at Village Hall this way: “The top tier of Glenview’s village administration is expanding as early retirements shrink the overall village workforce.”
Village Manager Hileman is a fairly young guy – well under 40, and he may be more comfortable playing boss to the new kids, but in the long run you have to wonder if these changes are a good deal for Glenview.
The guy who used to be Glenview’s budget manager, for example, had 32 years of municipal government experience compared with Jessica Rio’s 12. He was a certified CPA, had an MBA and was a certified government finance manager through the Association of Government Managers. Rio has a masters degree in urban planning and public policy.
And, finally, we have to ask about those salaries Glenview is paying its new execs. While assistant village managers earn $140,000 per year, local cops start at around $54,000 and top out at $72,000.
The Glenview Watch 