Tuesday, September 17, 2024
By Kevin Boneske
Staff Writer
HOWARD – Similar to how the village board filled two trustee vacancies last year, Howard will be seeking to fill an opening for municipal judge.
The board agreed Monday, June 10, to have Village President Burt McIntyre lead the interview process for filling the opening the village will be advertising.
Village Administrator Paul Evert informed the board the current municipal judge, Gregg Schreiber, who has served in the position since 1999, will be moving this summer to the Fox Valley area.
“His hope was that he can continue to serve as our judge this summer with a reserve appointment, which the district court has granted, which is very helpful to us,” Evert said. “We can fill this position in kind of a thoughtful amount of time.”
Evert said it will be up to the board to appoint a new municipal judge, who would serve until a special election next spring.
The winner would be elected to serve the remainder of the current term, which expires in April 2021 when the position would be up for a new four-year term.
“After talking this over with President McIntyre, we thought we could just follow the same procedure we followed for replacing the last two vacant trustee positions, which would be we’d advertise, President McIntyre and a trustee or two could interview prospective candidates and then bring one to the board that they would suggest we get appointed,” Evert said. “So, probably by the end of the summer, we’d have somebody in place.”
If only one person applied for municipal judge, McIntyre said he would not recommend a panel of board members be formed to interview a candidate, but if two or more people applied, he’d favor a three-person panel of board members to interview the candidates.
Last year, interview panels were formed before the board made the trustee appointments of Scott Beyer in Wards 9 and 10 and John Muraski in Wards 7 and 8 after more than one person applied for those vacancies.
Beyer and Muraski were subsequently elected in April to finish the final year of the two-year terms.
In other action, the board approved an ordinance amendment no longer requiring the municipal judge to file a $2,000 bond related to protecting the government and its residents from violations of a fiduciary duty by a person in a position that handles money.
Instead, the village will now provide at its own expense an insurance policy with not less than $5,000 in theft and dishonesty coverage.
