Carol Mitten 'Not The Right Fit' For Evanston, City Council Determines

EVANSTON, IL — Urbana City Administrator Carol Mitten will not be the next permanent Evanston city manager, city officials announced.

Following a town hall meeting last week, Mitten lost the support of councilmembers, who had earlier named her the lone finalist for the position.

"After continued conversations, the Evanston City Council and Urbana City Administrator Carol Mitten have decided that Ms. Mitten is not the right fit for the Evanston City Manager position and will not be moving forward as a candidate," city staff said Tuesday in a statement.

"The City thanks Ms. Mitten for her time throughout the recruitment process and wishes her the best of luck as she moves forward in her career," it said.

The Urbana city administrator, who has not responded to a request for comment about her candidacy in Evanston, faced protests from community members who questioned her commitment to racial equity and transparency, among other things.

Earlier: Not Smitten With Mitten, Evanstonians Question Potential City Manager

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Urbana has a population of about 38,000, while Evanston has more than 78,000 residents. With a strong-mayor form of government, Urbana went without a city administrator for more than decade before Mitten was hired, while Evanston has a council-manager system in which the city manager is the chief executive of the municipality.

Councilmembers are discussing what to do next steps in the search for a permanent city manager with Interim City Manager Luke Stowe, who took over from former Interim City Manager Kelley Gandurski last month.

The city has been searching for a permanent city manager since the October 2021 negotiated resignation of former City Manager Erika Storlie, who quit to take a pay cut to administer East Dundee.

Storlie left amid an independent investigation into the city's handling of allegations of abuse of women and girls who worked at the lakefront. On her way out the door, she inked a payout deal with former human resources chief Jennifer Lin, who the investigation later identified as a major factor in the city's lackluster response to the allegations.

So far this year, the City Council has identified two pairs of finalists and Mitten, a lone finalist. In the first set of finalists, alderpeople were leaning toward Daniel Ramos, a former Baltimore deputy administrator, but he took a job in the Houston area.

The city retained Cooperative Personnel Services, or CPS HR, to lead the first unsuccessful search before hiring Stanton Chase to take over the search in February.

Then, after the City Council voted to approve a contract that Ann Arbor City Administrator John Fournier had negotiated, he asked for it to be restructured and conversations ended.

Mitten reportedly refused to participate in the earlier processes because they would have required her to be named publicly along with one or more other candidates.