"Acting Mayor" to Serve in Barnett's Absence
With no mayor pro tem, the Village Council will choose a commissioner to chair the meeting.
The first order of business for tonight’s Downers Grove Village Council meeting is to appoint an acting mayor to serve in the absence of Mayor Bob Barnett.
Typically, this role would be filled by the mayor pro tem, but that position was left vacant after the mayor’s appointment of Commissioner Martin Tully was rejected on a 4-3 vote during the council’s May 20 meeting. In the weeks since, Tully has been making motions (an action traditionally taken by the pro tem) and Leslie Sadowski-Fugitt, the senior member of the council, has been seconding.
Whether future mayoral absences will be handled on a similar case-by-case basis remains to be seen. When asked in June whether he would introduce another resolution for mayor pro tem, Barnett told me the item is on hold.
“It hasn’t come up again because we are scheduling governance meetings,” he said. “It will probably be something we talk about there.”
The governance meetings, sometimes referred to as council retreats, are scheduled for July 15 and August 15. Typically, they provide an opportunity for council members to discuss the roles and responsibilities of both commissioners and staff, and also to consider changes to the structure of council meetings. In recent years those have included the elimination of a fourth monthly meeting as well as the decision to include both first reading items and action items on the same agenda. Previously, the council held a separate monthly meeting to workshop items.
Governance meetings also are the place where council members can attempt to work out their differences, such as those that were heatedly aired on May 20. It became obvious during the meeting that there are festering resentments which need to be addressed in order for the council to work more effectively and collaboratively. (For more about what’s handled in governance meetings, see this 2017 memo from Village Manager Dave Fieldman.)
Whether the role of mayor pro tem will be filled remains an open question, however. Barnett now has less than two years remaining on his term and has not, to my knowledge, logged excessive absences.
Further, “there is nothing in state law that requires us to have a mayor pro tem,” he said. “In the mayor’s absence, the council will elect an acting mayor in that moment.”
The Downers Grove Municipal Code includes an ordinance that describes the pro tem role and its responsibilities, and requires that within 60 days of the municipal election, the mayor “shall appoint from the members of the council a mayor pro tem, subject to confirmation by the Village Council.”
“We’ve fulfilled that requirement,” Barnett said, noting that the ordinance goes back only “four or five mayors.”
In discussing the duties of the mayor pro tem on May 20, Barnett enumerated the powers vested in the mayor—responsibilities the mayor pro tem might be called upon to exercise. They include acting as the official chief executive of the village, enforcing liquor laws and issuing executive orders in response to an emergency or disaster.
Barnett said he chose Tully, a former two-term mayor, with those heavy responsibilities in mind. “I am certain every person up on this dais could manage the next meeting,” he said on May 20. “They could cut the next ribbon, they could show up at the ceremony and give a little speech on what we’ve done. But that’s not the potential job.”
So, it remains to be seen which of six council members will chair tonight’s meeting. Given Barnett’s assessment that all are capable, we’ll have to wait and see whether the gavel goes to Sadowski-Fugitt, Tully, Chris Gilmartin, Mike Davenport or one of the two newbies, Tammy Sarver and Rob Roe. You can watch the meeting here to find out.