It was in mid December that the village’s former administrator said he would be leaving Forest Park to take a new job. A month later, he served his last day and a week or so after that, village council members began squabbling over the hiring process. It wasn’t until late February that the council decided how it would parse through the 30 or so applications it had received. Meanwhile, as a majority of the council pushed to fill the position in a timely fashion the pages of the calendar kept turning.
Welcome to mid August.
Mayor Anthony Calderone was upfront at the outset of all this that he had little interest in bringing in a new administrator. He publicly questioned the value the job brings, and repeatedly threw former administrators under the bus. Now the public has learned that Calderone needs more time to make a decision on which of the four remaining applicants should be hired. One of those applicants, of course, is the mayor’s boyhood friend and political ally, Tim Gillian.
Meanwhile, the rest of the council is ready to vote.
The mayor’s inadequate explanation as to why he is further delaying this decision, as reported in this week’s Review, deserves to be challenged. Since he won’t offer a credible answer, this page will.
It is entirely understandable that Calderone would prefer to abstain from voting on the new administrator. Our hunch is that commissioners Mike Curry and Mark Hosty will vote in favor of hiring Gillian, while commissioners Marty Tellalian and Rory Hoskins will not. If the mayor can stall for time and flip one of those votes in Gillian’s favor, he gets to say that his hands are clean.
Another scenario is that by delaying a decision, one or more of the applicants will drop out (and who could blame them). With a shallower applicant pool it would be easier to justify hiring his buddy.
Of course, we’re just speculating and could be way off. By all means, mayor, put an end to the guessing game. Tell the public – to whom you’re responsible – why they don’t yet have a qualified professional running the village
