Bloomington's mayor says there were a lot of applications for a vacant second ward city council seat filled this week, and some of those candidates could fill open seats on boards and commissions.
Mayor Mboka Mwilambwe said there were about a dozen people interested in serving the final two years of Donna Boelen's unexpired term. Boelen resigned last year. Mwilambwe picked, and the council this week approved, high school basketball coach and State Farm information security manager Micheal Mosley to fill the seat.
Mwilambwe said most council members already knew Mosley and thought well of him as a person of integrity. He's also a deliberative person, which Mwilambwe said is a good quality to have on the council.
“He's very thoughtful and paused. He did not have any preconceived notions. He often spoke about really wanting to dive deeply into things before having a really strong opinion," said Mwilambwe.
Of the dozen applicants, Mwilambwe said about five were highly qualified. And he will try not to let those applications go to waste.
“For the people who applied for Ward 2, those are people I am also reaching out to and seeing if they would be willing to join a board or commission," Mwilambwe said on WGLT's Sound Ideas.
There are vacancies on the Safe Communities Special Commission focusing on gun violence, the Human Relations Commission, and the Public Safety and Community Relations Board.
He said the safe communities panel needs someone with a mental health background. One candidate already has withdrawn because of time constraints, and possible picks did not respond to feelers, which puts Mwilambwe back to square one.
He said other council members have offered to recommend people to fill youth positions on the Public Safety and Community Relations Board after the council decided not to relax requirements that there must be two youth members of the panel.
And he said the city is taking other measures to drum up candidates for vacancies.
“We've put out some things on social media just to try to recruit more people — for example, for the welcoming America Commission, which has lingered on for some reason,” said Mwilambwe.
He said the city has had no difficulty filling positions on more popular development-centered boards like the Planning Commission and Zoning Board of Appeals.
Federal upheaval
When President Trump’s administration imposed a freeze on government grant payments, the move briefly cut off city access to a federal disbursement portal. Mwilambwe said that was restored after a federal judge imposed a pause on the order and the city has not seen other difficulties arise.
"No, we haven't" said Mwilambwe, noting that doesn't relieve the city from the general climate of uncertainty.
"Wait and see. Wait and watch. And then we'll see what happens," he, adding other areas could eventually be affected by federal changes.
"One area that we were looking at is some grants we were expecting to receive when it comes to law enforcement," said Mwilambwe.
He said the city will remain in close touch with lawmakers who might be able to intervene if there are further difficulties.
And the city also will pay attention to not get too far behind in recapturing payments under grant programs that still exist.
"We're going to have to be very careful and monitor some of the spending that depends on reimbursements for example," said Mwilambwe.
Community Impact and Enhancement
Despite a soft hiring freeze aimed at reducing the city workforce by attrition over the next three years, the mayor said the city will fill the newly-vacant position of director of Community Impact and Enhancement within the Department of Economic and Community Development.
“It’s one that is pretty critical and housing is very important to the community," said Mwilambwe. "We certainly do not want to have that position be vacant or do a re-shuffling."
The previous director, Melissa Hon, left to become deputy city manager job in Decatur. That came shortly after the city reorganized Economic and Community development into two bodies to allow one person to specialize in promoting construction to address the housing shortage.
“We want to give this a chance to work in the way we had envisioned,” said Mwilambwe, adding there will be a "robust" search process to find a person for the post.
“We need someone who has some experience understanding grants, but also community development, [housing] rehab, and also rental inspections to make sure our housing stock remains up to par,” he said.
