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East St. Louis ousts city manager after 4 months on job

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) - The merry-go-round of East St. Louis city government continued to spin Monday as elected leaders jettisoned a city manager hired only after losing his April mayoral re-election bid.

Two City Council members and current Mayor Emeka Jackson-Hicks voted Monday to fire Alvin Parks Jr. as the city continues to struggle with a nearly $6 million budget shortfall. Longtime city employee Edith Moore was named interim city manager.

The city was sued by its police and firefighter pension funds over millions in missed payments. Police officers and other city employees have recently been laid off, including a public safety director who took early retirement from the U.S. Secret Service to work for East St. Louis. The dismissal of nearly 20 city workers allowed Parks to drop plans to also cut several firefighter jobs.

Officials have also suggested that the city may need to take out loans to meet employee payroll.

Parks, who spent eight years as mayor, said the vote caught him by surprise.

"Your guess is as good as mine," he said when asked if he was given a reason for his termination. "I accept the results and am moving on."

Jackson-Hicks and the two council members who voted to oust Parks - including one whose previous vote led to Parks' City Hall return in a 3-2 decision - did not immediately respond to AP interview requests.

Parks was hired in late August - amid audience chants at a public council meeting of "No Alvin Parks" - and earned $100,000 annually, twice his salary as mayor. His predecessor had relocated from Colorado and been on the job for just one month after Jackson-Hicks ousted yet another city manager.

East St. Louis has had 13 police chiefs since 2005. Two of those chiefs spent time in federal prison - one for shielding a politically-connected businessman from a criminal probe by hiding a gun, the other for stealing video game consoles from a car while on duty as chief of nearby Alorton.

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Follow Alan Scher Zagier on Twitter at http://twitter.com/azagier

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This story has been corrected to show that the city didn't cut firefighter jobs after earlier indicating that it planned to do so.

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Information from: Belleville News-Democrat, http://www.bnd.com

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