Glen Ellyn trustees sure knew how to end 2007 with a bang.

After this week’s particularly contentious workshop meeting — the last one of the year — the Village Board will look to Town Builder Studios for possible advice on invigorating Glen Ellyn’s downtown.

The decision to negotiate a contract with the Riverside-based consulting firm did not come easy, as trustees and even residents clashed over who should guide the village’s downtown strategic plan during the Monday, Dec. 17 meeting.

After the vote, trustees in the minority challenged both on how the firms applying for the contract were vetted as well as how the board came to its final decision, with one trustee even calling for the process to be scrapped and renewed from scratch.

Monday’s dispute was essentially a continuation from a workshop meeting last week, when the trustees first split over the firms.

Trustees Sara Lee, Tim Armstrong and Pete Ladesic supported Naperville-based Houseal Lavigne, while trustees Peter Norton and James Comerford and President Vicky Hase backed Town Builder Studios. Trustee Michelle Thorsell said she supported Vandewalle and Associates, another finalist.

After the initial vote count, the discussion was tabled until this week’s meeting, when Thorsell said she would instead support Town Builder Studios’ bid.

While she still believes Vandewalle is the most experienced and qualified firm, Thorsell said she would compromise so the board can reach the four-vote majority it needs to hire a firm.

“We have to move on,” she said after the meeting. “We can’t just have a stalemate.”
Thorsell’s decision to back Town Builder Studio strayed from what she had said at last week’s meeting, when she listed Houseal Lavigne as her second choice.

But since then she reconsidered the firms, she said, and she realized Town Builder Studios has compiled the strongest overall team.

“I had made a mistake,” she said after the meeting, speaking of her initial support for Houseal Lavigne. “It has to be about the whole team and not just the lead.”

Thorsell was specifically drawn to the Town Builder Studios’ financial firm, Gruen Gruen and Associates, and its architecture firm, BauerLatoza Studio, she said.
Village staffers now will work with Town Builder Studios to develop a contract, which could come before the board at its next meeting Jan. 14.

But if this week’s meeting is any indication, a contract discussion will only send the board deeper into disagreement. Soon after the votes were tallied Monday, trustees launched into a heated debate over the entire process of interviewing firms.

Views on the process broke down along mostly the same lines as the vote for the firms. Ladesic, Armstrong and Lee — who all backed Houseal Lavigne — were critical, while Town Builder Studios supporters Norton, Comerford and Hase defended it. Thorsell stayed silent during the debate.

Lee criticized Hase’s decision to end last week’s meeting after one round of voting. The trustees should have continued the deliberation to break the tie, Lee said.

“Vandewalle should have been eliminated, and we should have voted for the top two,” she said. “I think the evening was done poorly.”

Hase defended her handling of the vote, saying it would be unfair to criticize her for what happened when she was just as uncertain as the trustees on how to proceed.

“I’m sorry if I don’t think fast enough, but that’s the reality of what happened,” Hase said.
But her justifications were not enough to assuage the three trustees’ concerns, as Ladesic called into question the fairness of the entire hiring process.

Last month trustees learned that one of the members of the search committee, which narrowed the 17 candidates down to two initial finalists, previously had competed professionally against Houseal Lavigne as well as numerous other planning consultants.

Houseal Lavigne was not recommended as a finalist by the search committee, and it only became one with the advocacy of some trustees.

While acting Village Manager Curt Barrett said village staff had known about the professional competition and did not see it as a conflict of interest, Ladesic said it has made him question the integrity of the interview process.

“We should have shut down the whole process there and started back from square one,” he said Tuesday, Dec. 18.

Norton challenged that characterization, saying the board’s decision ultimately came down to the interviews it conducted, rather than the search committee’s recommendations.

“We made our discussions based on (those) presentations,” Norton said.

The debate ended without resolution when trustees ran past their allotted time for the workshop meeting. The trustees were scheduled to reconvene in another room for their official board meeting, whose agenda did not address the downtown strategic plan.

Before adjourning the workshop, Hase said she hoped the board could move past the disagreement. But Ladesic said afterward it is unlikely that the board has heard the end of the debate.

“I would pretty much bet there would be more discussion,” he said.