Moore hopes to eliminate director of administrative services position as part of management restructure

QUINCY — Quincy’s first female mayor hopes to become the first without a person who would be considered “second in command.”

Mayor-elect Linda Moore, who will be sworn in during a ceremony in Washington Park on Sunday, is planning to make a first-of-its-kind change to the organizational structure of the city’s administration.

The current organizational structure has the head of every department reporting to the mayor and the director of administrative services — known decades ago as deputy mayor. Moore wants to create three levels of management, which she believes offers opportunities for leadership and development. 

Jeffrey Conte would remain as the director of public works and oversee water/sewer, engineering, capital projects and Central Services. Dan Brink, a former two-term alderman who unsuccessfully ran for the Republican nomination for mayor this spring, would become the director of operations, a new position. He would oversee Quincy Transit Lines, Quincy Regional Airport, inspections and a newly created safety/security department.

The director of business operations would oversee the comptroller, legal, human resources and information technology. Moore would handle that role while also overseeing planning and development “for now.”

“I’m not going to fill the director of business operations (role) because that’s my specialty,” she said. “I don’t have the money anyway. … My hope is that somebody in one of those areas might just step up and prove to be the leader to take that role.”

Moore’s planned restructuring of city government must be approved by the Quincy City Council at its May 5 meeting.

Moore said she spoke with five candidates to become the director of administrative services, 

“I was prepared to start meeting with 10 other names as well, because I hadn’t found a right person (to be the director of administrative services),” she said.

Moore believes this structure creates an opportunity to bring in a city manager in the future. She said many city officials have expressed an interest in the creation of that position, but she believes a city manager would require an annual salary of between $250,000 and $350,000.

“It might be good down the road, as budgets get tighter and things get harder, if we had a more vertical organization where we had the opportunity for leadership and management decision making at various levels,” Moore said. “That seems to make more sense with me. Then I started looking at, how would I split things up?

“We have some really good number twos in a lot of departments. We just need to develop number twos in every department. Changing the organization to this kind of structure will set us up well for the future.”

Moore said the new organizational setup offers an opportunity for what she called “cross functional collaboration.”

“Somebody in one department is working with somebody in another department to collaborate to solve a mutual problem,” Moore explained. “For example, in Central Services, you have a lot of water and sewer guys. if Central Services is in another area, then you have two of those three arms working together. If inspections is here and Central Services is there, then they can work together in nuisance abatement.

“In almost every situation, you have two of the three areas that have to cooperate and collaborate to solve a mutual problem. By doing that, you foster more communication, and it also generates more ideas. We got to change how we do business. If we don’t, then we’re sunk. People have to work together, and I want to breed that kind of a culture where people collaborate to find a better solution.”

Conte has been the director of public works since Mayor Mike Troup re-created the position in June 2022. He was the first director of public works since Leon Kowalski, who had the position for 20 years before retiring in 1998. Conte previously worked in utilities and engineering since 2013.

Brink was an alderman in Quincy’s 6^th Ward from 2009 to 2017. He started his career as a counselor at the Adams County Juvenile Justice Center and later became a probation officer in Adams County. He was an assistant vice president at First Bankers Trust and a facility manager and collection officer for 10 years. He also oversaw a bank security program at 10 locations. 

Gov. J.B. Pritzker named him to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board in 2019 for a two-year term. He has since been a security guard at Blessing Hospital.

Brink lost the Republican primary in February to Troup, who garnered 1,770 votes (52 percent) while Brink received 1,632 votes.

“Many of the aldermen were really pushing me to bring Dan on, and I like Dan,” Moore said. “Dan has a lot of positive qualities and a lot of knowledge. We kind of connected during the campaign. Several days he was texting me things, and I was like, ‘Oh, I hadn’t thought about that.’ He had some good advice for me, which was good. I think (the role of director of business operations) plays to his strengths.”

Brink says he’s excited about the opportunity “to earn the trust” of Moore and the City Council.

“Linda and I have talked throughout the campaign and developed a mutual respect for each other,” Brink said. “She is bringing forth a lot of good ideas that are what I think would make a change in the city, and I think they’ll be positive. I’m excited to join her administration.”

Moore says the new safety and security department would start with assessing threats to the city. She said Illinois has an organization called the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Administration (CISA) that offers its services for free. 

“If we had to pay a company to do this, it would be $80,000,” she said.

She wants Brink to connect with CISA officials to have an analysis completed.

“Most of the things they likely will recommend will simply be changes to processes, so there’s no real cost involved on the cybersecurity side,” Moore said.

Moore said she is considering outsourcing the city’s informational technology services.

“If we can work with an organization and share some of the expenses across two organizations, maybe both save some money and maybe save some positions,” she said. “I hope I have a solution in the next two to three weeks.”

Moore also said Lonnie Dunn, who has served as the city’s corporation counsel during the Kyle Moore and Troup administrations, will be replaced by Bruce Alford on an interim basis. Moore and she and Alford will explore possibly outsourcing that position as well.

Moore said she doesn’t anticipate any other personnel changes for a while.

“I want to see who can deliver,” she said. “I will charge every director to figure out a way to deliver the services we need at a lower price. How do we save taxpayer dollars? Maybe we’re going to be able to do that. Maybe we aren’t. But who has ideas?”

Quincy’s Second-In-Command

Below is a list of deputy mayors or directors of administrative services (DAS), the mayors they served under and the years they served since 1949.