By Andrea Arens
Peotone Village Administrator Aimee Ingalls tendered her resignation, and her last day in Peotone will be July 19.
Ingalls served five years with Peotone, hired by former mayor Steve Cross and the previous board that included current mayor, Peter March. If they were to hire, the board could only offer a one-year contract per municipal code, because the mayor’s term is up next year.
At the special board meeting on July 11, an agenda item for a discussion around a GovTemps recruitment service was suggested by March as a possible solution, who said, “should they choose to go that route.”
“I went through this process twice before and, the first time we did it, we tried to do it ourselves and the quality of candidates was not that great. The second time we kind of used a search firm but still did a lot of the work ourselves. If we can’t get someone right away, that’s kind of something we have to decide which way we want to go with it,” said Mayor March.
March also suggested it was an option if they couldn’t get someone right away. He also said searches take time and, if they couldn’t fill the position right away, it could take three months to do a search.
Trustee Sandberg suggested he’d be willing to be on a committee, and March responded, in the past, the whole board served as a committee because everyone wanted input.
Trustee Strba asked if the village would post it in multiple locations, such as Indeed, and March said there are specific sites government employees and managers post on. Strba also suggested posting to an Illinois Municipal League board.
Trustee Richards believed going the government posting route would be more ideal because of the abundance of applications that would come through sites like LinkedIn.
Trustee Strba asked if a new administrator’s contract would be similar, and March suggested the contract would be similar, but the terms would be negotiated per the candidate.