UPDATE - March 22, 10:48 p.m.: Only one candidate, Julie Workman, met with Park District commissioners tonight in the first interview session the board conducted as it seeks a replacement for outgoing commissioner Rob Metzger. The session was closed to the public.)
The Park District of La Grange tonight will conduct the first of two interview sessions scheduled this week with some if not all of the five individuals who asked to be considered for appointment to fill a vacancy on its board of commissioners created by the resignation announced in January by Rob Metzger. The second interview session is set for Wednesday evening.
The board has opted to close the interview sessions to the public under an exemption to the Illinois Open Meetings Act allowing private meetings for "[t]he selection of a person to fill a public office [...] including a vacancy in a public office, when the public body is given power to appoint under law or ordinance."
The park board last Thursday decided not to exclude two candidates, James Fornaciari and Julie Workman, whose applications were received after the deadline of 5 p.m. on March 1 set by the board.
Workman's application was emailed to Executive Director Dean Bissias at 10:44 p.m. March 1; Fornaciari's application, also via email, was not sent until March 5.
The other three candidates—Bradley Belcaster, James Boo and Daniel Shoemaker—all submitted their applications before the deadline.
The decision to keep all five candidates in the running was made in closed session, and was not announced or explained by President Tim Kelpsas when the board returned to open session.
But following Thursday's meeting, Commissioner Chris Walsh, acknowledged the decision and said that the park board was free to make rules, and later change them, as it sees fit because the Illinois Park District Code does not specifically govern the selection process, other than to require that candidates be registered voters and reside in the district.
"I personally, in the [Jan. 25 board] meeting where we talked about this, asked whether we were at liberty to use any mechanism of our choice, and if we didn’t get enough people in could we still continue and this and that," Walsh said. "I don’t remember the exact words. But the answer is yeah, you can use any mechanism you want. There’s no prescribed way and it’s OK. If you only get one applicant by March 1, you can keep it going or whatever. It’s no big deal."
A review of an audio recording of the Jan. 25 meeting, at which Metzger's resignation was announced and the board discussed and agreed on March 1 as the deadline for applications, did not contain any discussion about whether the deadline was flexible.
However, at that meeting Rob Bush, the Park District's attorney, did tell the commissioners, "How you go about selecting that individual is entirely up to you."
There was some discussion about extending the deadline at the board's Feb. 25 meeting after Bissias reported that he had received verbal inquiries from six individuals but had yet to received a single application in writing.
Commissioner Mary Ellen Penicook recommended that the board continue to solicit applications until at least five applicants came forward. Vice President Bob Ashby noted that voters had only four candidates to choose from in last year's election when three board seats were up for grabs.
"Can we make the decision when the time comes?" Walsh asked regarding a deadline extension.
"Yeah, you can," Bissias replied.
When Ashby noted that the board had not set a timeline beyond the application deadline for appointing one of the candidates, Walsh responded, "Even if we did agree we can unagree. The process that we use to select this person is not something that we have to etch in marble."
Given the flexibility the board appears to have, Walsh last Thursday was asked if potential applicants were misled by the legal notice published in the Feb. 17 edition of the Suburban Life newspaper and a similar notice posted on the Park District website--both of which stated, "All inquiries must be received no later than 5 p.m. on March 1, 2010."
Walsh, who claims not to have seen either notice, replied, "Everyone had the benefit of the opportunity to go to the meeting and hear exactly what was talked about because all of this happened in a public meeting.
"People who were interested and learned of the vacancy applied and we are considering the applications that we received," Walsh continued. "We are at liberty to receive more; we are at liberty to solicit more. I don’t see what is controversial about any of that. To the extent that someone thinks it is controversial, I would say that they need to take a broader view of things when, in the very meeting that we talked about that a vacancy was going to exist, we talked about how we might fill it."
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