The Evanston City Council voted 7-1 to authorize the appointment of Kelley Gandurski as the interim city manager.
The appointment was originally scheduled for the Sept. 13 meeting, but was pushed to Monday when council members said they did not receive the proper five-day notice of the contract.
Gandurski was the deputy city manager for the city of Evanston. According to the employment agreement, she will be employed as the interim city manager until a new city manager is hired. She would then return to her role as deputy city manager.
Some council members expressed concern over the termination clause of the contract. According to city documents, Gandurski can be “removed from office by a vote of seven or more of the members of the city council.”
Ald. Clare Kelly believed that this rule was not necessary as it is written in the City Council rules and code.
“This is our legislative domain, and I feel it usurps our elected officials’ legislative domain to have that in an employment contract,” she said.
However, Mayor Daniel Biss along with Ald. Melissa Wynne felt that it was not appropriate to negotiate an employment contract during a City Council meeting. They believed that the interim period would not be long enough to see a rule change in the city code.
“The notion that policy change would wind its way through both the rules committee to change the rules … and to initiate an ordinance to change the code, and then there would still be time leftover during the course of the interim period … strikes me as pretty far fetched,” Biss said.
The motion passed on a vote of 7-1, with Kelly voting no. Gandurski began her new role at Monday night’s special meeting.
Gandurski will be replacing Erika Storlie, who consented to a separation agreement with the city in August. Under the terms of her agreement, Storlie will receive a severance package including her normal salary, 20 weeks of compensation and health care coverage through Dec. 31, 2021.
Emily Little is a freelance reporter.
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