Not Smitten With Mitten: Evanstonians Question Potential City Manager

EVANSTON, IL — The lone finalist for job of becoming the city's next permanent chief executive took questions from Evanston residents Thursday during a town hall meeting moderated by the mayor.

Carol Mitten, the city administrator of Urbana, is the third candidate this year to appear to have received the tentative approval of the City Council to become Evanston city manager — the only position councilmembers are responsible for hiring and firing.

Evanston is on its second interim city manager since the negotiated resignation of Erika Storlie in October 2021. Chief Information Officer Luke Stowe took over for former interim City Manager Kelley Gandurski earlier this month.

Mitten, who spent much of her career in the Washington, D.C., was hired in Urbana in 2018. Former Urbana Mayor Laurel Pressing had left the position vacant for a decade before she was defeated in a Democratic Party primary by current Mayor Diane Marlin.

During the town hall, Biss presented topical clusters of questions submitted by residents. Members of the audience chimed in and were at times admonished by the mayor, and at times permitted to offer follow-ups.

Mitten faced questions about her commitment to transparency, antiracism, climate justice, affordable housing and police reform.

She also discussed her background as a Cleveland native and erstwhile U.S. Naval Academy cadet — "I left because I didn't like the military," she explained — and her past public sector positions, which followed a two-decade career as a real estate appraiser, as well as an early experience dealing with local government while representing her building in an unsuccessful effort to fend off a planned unit development.

"Every past job has prepared me for the next job. Some people think, 'Oh, you know, Urbana's so small and it only has 250 employees,'" Mitten said. "Well when I was in Arlington, I oversaw a department — I didn't run it — but I oversaw a department that had 650 people in it and then another department that had about 50 people in it."

Mitten acknowledged complaints of Urbana's handling of public records requests under the Freedom of Information Act. She said city staff had faced very caustic criticism over relatively minor matters.

Last year, the Illinois Attorney General determined that the Urbana City Council violated the Open Meetings Act by muting citizens during public comments. The city was also sued over its restrictions what residents could say during the portion of public meetings allocated to comments from the public.

At Thursday's town hall, Mitten said the restrictions were put in place because some people were using the meetings to bully city staff and it was having a negative effect on morale.

"So with the advice of the city attorney, we put these new public input rules in place, and then we got sued. So that actually was voted on by council," Mitten said.

"And then, once we had weigh-in from outside counsel who said, 'You really can't restrict speech in that way,' then we settled that lawsuit and changed our public input rules," she said. "So we learned a hard lesson, and I still struggle sometimes with how to protect staff and how to create an environment that is civil, given that it's their workspace, and they're entitled to not work in a hostile work environment."

Mitten also discussed the April 2020 arrest of Aleyah Lewis, of Champaign, which led to an independent investigation by the firm Hillard Heintze after it was captured on video and widely shared on social media.

Lewis was wrestled to the ground and forced into handcuffs by three officers, one of whom suffered a broken thumb in the process. A year after her arrest, Lewis pleaded guilty to felony resisting arrest in exchange for 18 months of probation and prosecutors agreeing to drop other charges she faced.

"The only person that got hurt was a police officer," Mitten said Thursday. "The only only uses of force that were used were determined to be, they were each a single technique that was used one time to gain the compliance of Ms. Lewis to be arrested. And then there was a lot of outcry from the community around that, and so we hired an outside firm to evaluate and determine whether in fact the police chief's conclusion that no policies had been violated, whether they agreed with that."

Mitten discussed Evanston's Climate Action and Resiliency Plan, which she said needs to evolve from "unconstrained planning" to implementation.

"The plan talks about different types of areas where progress can be made, and so you have a goal that's set, but really no road map to get there, or no bank account that's segregated to get there," Mitten said. "And so that's the next step that needs to take place."

Mitten was reappointed by the Urbana City Council for a new two-year term last month by a 6-1 vote.

In January, the Evanston City Council was preparing to make an offer to a former Baltimore Deputy City Administrator Daniel Ramos but he instead accepted a position in Travis County, Texas. Alderpeople agreed to hire a new search firm, and a new set of finalists were announced.

The council then voted to approve a contract with Ann Arbor City Administrator John Fournier, but he tried too restructure the contract to arrange for additional upfront compensation to cover relocation costs and negotiations broke down before a deal was finalized.

According to 8th Ward Ald. Devon Reid, Mitten withdrew herself from the running during Evanston's previous city manager search instead of appearing in a forum with another finalist.

“Carol Mitten withdrew herself precisely because she did not want to be part of public engagement," Reid said at a ward meeting prior to the town hall, according to the Evanston RoundTable. "And quite frankly, the reason we are presenting a single candidate to the public now, and the reason that we’re rolling it out in a manner that I think is actually doing more harm than good, is because the candidate themselves, Carol Mitten, would not participate if there was a public process with multiple candidates."

Watch: Full July 28 City Manager Candidate Town Hall »