Elk Grove's longtime village manager to retire
Five years into his job at village hall, Ray Rummel helped establish Elk Grove Village's first village website. It was 1994, and many people probably knew little about the internet.
Today, Elk Grove is home to nearly a dozen data centers - a Midwestern hub, no less - that are among the slew of high-tech companies in the nation's largest industrial park.
Rummel, only the fourth village manager in the village's 65-year history, announced this week that he will officially retire March 31 at the conclusion of the annual budgeting process.
"Where else would you want to be?" Rummel said of Elk Grove. "WalletHub just named Elk Grove Village one of the best small cities in America. Where can you work with an Illinois fire chief of the year and a four-star police chief, and a plane to bring the president of the United States to see a Microsoft data center right here in Elk Grove Village? It's truly amazing, and that was just the past month."
Rummel has overseen day-to-day operations at village hall since being appointed to the top administrative post in 2007. He's quietly worked behind the scenes as colorful Mayor Craig Johnson's right-hand man, a job that includes implementing the mayor and board of trustees' policy direction and, often, fielding Johnson's calls late at night, early in the morning and on weekends.
Johnson admits he can sometimes be a "pain," but it was through those scheduled and unscheduled meetings and conversations that the mayor says he leaned on Rummel's expertise in municipal government.
"The reason we have our success - you know, it's easy for us to stand up here and take the bows, myself and the board - but it's the staff behind us that get the things done," Johnson said at a village board meeting this week. "Ray's in charge of making sure the policy set gets done right.
"And some of the cockamamie ideas we come up with - Bahamas Bowl and all this stuff - they gotta make sure it works and comes through," Johnson continued. "It's not easy. And I guarantee, when Ray was going through school in government classes, no one teaches how to do a Bahamas Bowl or something like that."
Certainly, the village's sponsorships of the college football bowl game in 2018 and 2019 were among the more unconventional Johnson-led initiatives that Rummel helped implement. The manager in recent years also worked to create the Elk Grove Village Cares opioid addiction treatment program; oversaw construction of new fire stations, public works facilities and the village hall/public safety building; and helped recruit businesses to the east side business park, which notably included redevelopment of the former Busse Farm into the Elk Grove Technology Park that President Joe Biden visited Oct. 7.
Rummel came to Elk Grove in 1989, after working for a brief time in Lake Zurich and earning a master's degree in public administration. He lists then-Mayor Chuck Zettek and then-Village Manager Chuck Willis as early mentors, as well as former Village Manager Gary Parrin, whom Rummel succeeded in 2007 after being promoted from assistant village manager.
Rummel this week thanked department heads, village employees, the mayor and board, and his family.
"I'm going to miss this fantastic team of people as I move forward, but it's getting to be time to focus on my family, my health and my future, and looking forward to some greater times."
His replacement, appointed by Johnson and confirmed by a 6-0 vote of the board this week, is Matt Roan, the current deputy village manager who has worked alongside Rummel in that role for 14 years. Roan joined the village staff as an administrative intern in 2000 and worked his way up as assistant to the financial director and assistant to the village manager before entering his current position.