Naperville City Council pushing back on staffing requests

As Naperville works toward finalizing its 2022 budget, city council members are pushing back on staffing requests.

The city held the second of three budget workshops this week as the staff, city council and Mayor Steve Chirico dig deeper into anticipated expenses. Requests to bolster the staff committed to sustainability drew the attention of council members at Monday's workshop.

Finance Director Rachel Mayer detailed a new sustainability assistant position, to be hired midyear and work with recently hired Sustainability Coordinator Ben Mjolsness, at a cost of $54,000 in salary and benefits for the remainder of the year. There's an additional budget request for a communications specialist to focus on sustainability at a full-year cost of $91,000 in salary and benefits.

Sustainability has become a priority for the city in the wake of the council accepting the many recommendations from the Naperville Environment and Sustainability Task Force in August.

The city will hold its final budget workshop on Nov. 22 and vote to approve the budget on Dec. 7.

"A hundred and eight thousand dollars (for a full year) for an assistant," Councilman Paul Hinterlong said. "That sounds kind of high to me."

Councilwomen Theresa Sullivan and Jennifer Bruzan Taylor wondered about the need for a communications specialist. Linda LaCloche, Naperville's director of communications, defended the request by stressing how the city's many communications initiatives require adequate staffing.

"When we run so many programs and projects, and need communication for all of them, we have to dedicate those resources and move the people around to fit the need," LaCloche said.

Bruzan Taylor was still hesitant to approve the position.

"I'm having a really hard time seeing the need at all for a full-time employee, maybe a part-time," Bruzan Taylor said. "Even after tonight, I was hoping you'd be able to sell me, and I'm not being sold."

Councilmen Patrick Kelly and Ian Holzhauer indicated they'd support the hiring of a communications specialist. Chirico expressed concern about creating a sustainability "department" too quickly with multiples hires, but said he'd also support bolstering the city's communications staff.

"If there's one thing that we consistently have gotten criticism about is when we don't communicate properly as council members to the public or as a city to the public," Chirico said.