Opinion

OUR VIE W Botched hiring at village hall

Tim Gillian announced his plan to retire as Forest Park’s village administrator way back on Nov. 23. He gave the mayor and the village council two months notice of his plan to depart on Jan. 29.

Now it is Feb. 24.

An ill-considered plan to save $10,000 and not hire a professional search firm is spitting back at the mayor and village council with too few candidates having responded to the posting on Craig’s List. OK, we’re kidding about Craig’s List. But the amateur effort at recruiting leaves Forest Park with a reluctant and on-call village administrator who’d rather be fl ying his airplane than parachuting into problems at village hall.

A few thoughts: ■ This mess is disrespectful to Tim Gillian who has given his all to Forest Park in so many ways over so many decades. ■ Forest Park has no bench. This is a small and stretched staff that does not readily offer up an interim administrator. ■ Switching gears at this point to hire a search firm makes

Forest Park look cheap and directionless. Commissioner

Dan Novak was right on this issue from the start. Hiring a search firm was the obvious decision. ■ We still worry that someone, most likely Mayor Rory

Hoskins, has a candidate in his back pocket he’d like to slide in. ■ Forest Park’s ridiculous Council form of government will prove again to be a major impediment to hiring a legitimate manager. It might have worked great in a farm town in 1910 but it is not any way to run a municipality in 2021. ■ There are other people at village hall lining up to retire.

John Doss in public works will be gone this summer. The next administrator should have been in place to shape her leadership team. As always Forest Park needs to take every opportunity to add talent from the outside.

This mayor and council will never have a more critical decision to make than the hiring of a village administrator. So far this process has been a total botch.

Obsolete eet in public works

Why does Forest Park need to ace the hiring of a new village administrator? Because its entire public works fleet is worn out, broken and past reasonable repairs.

That’s the opinion of Jessica Voogd, a village council member, who pulled back the curtain on this serious problem while explaining why snow removal might take a little longer than usual. Voogd said the village should have made a plan to gradually upgrade the fleet as many as 10-15 years ago.

Forest Park finances have been tough for a long time. We know that. But investing gradually in critical equipment is the sort of planning the next administrator and the next public works chief will need to do. There won’t be painless solutions. But that is the work that elected officials and professional leaders are charged to do.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful … but as long as we’ve no place to go, let it snow, let it snow … How did you react to the snowstorm last week — 18 inches of the white stuff shutting most everything down?

It was like a stress test that revealed how healthy our “hearts” are. As if we hadn’t been tested enough by the virus. For some Forest Parkers, it was one more day in a long series of days in which they were forced to shelter in place. For others it might have been, to switch metaphors, the straw that broke the camel’s back. The reactions varied:

Chicken Little – In the children’s story, an acorn falls from an oak tree and hits Chicken Little on her head. The youngster seems to not have had much experience out in the world because she catastrophizes the event by telling everyone the sky is falling.

Some of my neighbors reacted to the snowstorm that way — with drama. Sometimes they have reasons for overreacting. My dad, for example, could not go to the annual Fourth of July fireworks. He had flown 50 missions in a B-26 during the Korean War, often with anti-aircraft flack bursting all around him. He knew in his head that the fireworks were harmless, but he still couldn’t go.

My dad knew that the fireworks were acorns, but to him they felt like the sky was falling.

Minimizers – Some folks are just the opposite. The sky really is falling and they dismiss it as just an acorn. Those are the kind people who tried to drive last week Tuesday, and you had to help them get their cars out of the snow bank they skidded into.

Often, minimizers are the offspring of Chicken Littles. Instead of adjusting as adults and finding an equilibrium, their pendulum swings to the opposite extreme.

Winter Wonderland – I’m retired, so I didn’t have to punch a time clock Tuesday morning, and my parttime job is writing for the Review, which I can do at my desk in the warmth of my study.

That night I put a Bing Crosby album on my CD player and heard him sing:

Sleigh bells ring, are you listening

In the lane, snow is glistening

A beautiful sight, we’re happy tonight

Walking in a winter wonderland

Being retired, I could sing along with Paul Simon, “I got no deeds to do, no promises to keep; I’m dappled and drowsy and ready for sleep.”

I turned off all the lights in the living room and watched the snow coming down in the glow of the streetlight. It had the same effect on me as staring at the campfire at Point Beach back in Wisconsin or gazing at the waves as they roll in off Lake Michigan.

My wife didn’t go into work that day — couldn’t even get out of the parking lot till late in the afternoon. We have the same introspective temperament, so we were both content to watch the falling snow for

OPINION

Let it snow

a long time without saying a word. And I heard Dean Martin’s voice singing in my head, Oh, the weather outside is frightful But the fire is so delightful And since we’ve no place to go Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow Man, it doesn’t show signs of stopping And I’ve brought me some corn for popping

TOM The lights are turned way down low Let it snow, let it snow HOLMES Our condo doesn’t have a fireplace, but you know what I mean. A WORTHY OPPONENT – I, of course, didn’t hear sleighbells in the lane that night. What I heard was the village snowplows making pass after pass — three plows in row — on our street trying to keep up with the storm. At first, I felt sorry for them because of the long hours they were putting in, but then in my mind I went back 60 years to when I was 13. My mom would wake me up at 6:30. I’d come down the stairs from my bedroom, look out the window, and exult, “Yes! A snow day!” My mom was a fourth-grade teacher, so she was already listening to WOMT-AM which was confirming every 10 minutes that school had been called off. My dad worked in an office, so he didn’t get an all-day pass, but when you live 170 miles north of Forest Park, no one expects you to punch the clock promptly at 8. After eating a big breakfast, my dad and I would join the neighbors who were already out shoveling their driveways and sidewalks. “Hey, Howie,” my dad would holler to Howard Halderson who was shoveling away across the street. “Enough snow for ya?” Bob Tuschl and Jerry Rydzewski, who lived on either side of us on MacArthur Drive, joined in the friendly banter as they shoveled. I didn’t say anything but felt grown up just to be included in what was at that time considered to be men’s work. I also felt great pleasure in feeling my “almost adult” muscles working. I was nearly keeping up with my dad. Together as a neighborhood we were taking on a “worthy opponent” in the foot of snow on the ground, and we were passing the test. As many of you know, I need the help of a walker to get around, and my snow shoveling days are over. What that worthy opponent now reveals is that I’m getting old and that my disorder is progressing. But the snow, piled up outside my living room window, brings back good memories, and I no longer feel sorry for the guys at public works who put in long hours because I suspect that they get a buzz from taking on the challenge, being good at what they do, and looking with satisfaction when they finally clock out at a job well done.