ROODHOUSE COUNCIL NIXES alderman appointment

By Editor | February 3, 2026 |

By Carmen Ensinger

The seat for Ward 3 alderman in Roodhouse has been vacant since May of 2025 when newly elected alderman Shane Kessinger moved out of Roodhouse. Since then, Mayor Jim Riley has been trying to find someone to fill the seat.
When a seat becomes open on a council or village board, typically, it is up to the mayor to appoint someone to fill that position, with advice and consent of the council.
After more than six months, Riley finally found someone to take the seat, Sharon Riley, a recently retired nurse, and the council rejected her appointment by a vote of 4-1 with alderman Ernie Brown being the lone yes vote in her favor and Steve Pope, Rusty Henline, Steve Speeks and Gage Giberson all voting no.
Alderman Pope began the dialog by saying that the council was once again “blindsided” by the mayor with the appointment. He then pointed out that virtually all of the members of the council were appointed by the mayor since almost every one of them walked out when Riley became Mayor. He then asked City Attorney Todd Parish when their seats were up and, if the seat Becker was going to fill shouldn’t be filled by a special election.
Parish said they were asking him something he couldn’t answer since he had no idea, at that time, when each alderman was appointed, whose place they were taking over for, nor how much time was left on the term of the alderman they were replacing.
“With that being said, shouldn’t we table this tonight until we have the answer,” Pope said.
Alderman Steve Speeks wanted to table the appointment for a different reason, though he did object to being blindsided as well.
“As Steve said, no one knew about this,” Speeks said. “But I have found in ILCS 65 5-3.1-10-50 (Illinois Compiled Statutes), which is also what our ordinances stipulates, is that after a position is open for 60 days or more, then the mayor is required to come up with two candidates and then the council discuss and votes on it.”
The city attorney said he had never heard of that statute, and, unless Speeks read the numbers wrong, there is no Illinois Compiled Statute by that number.
A motion to approve the payment of $500 to Ralph and Drew Riley for putting up and taking down the Christmas lights in the Roodhouse Park also drew some discussion.
Apparently, the council had discussed it and agreed that the Riley’s should perform the work, but never voted on it. It was now coming up for approval, after the fact.
Alderman Pope said someone had asked him about it.
“Someone approached me last night and asked me about it,” he said. “They wanted to know with this not being under the contract they have at the Rex and everything, would that be something that should be put up for bid.”
As Alderman Henline noted, “It is kind of late to bid it out now since it is already done.”
City Attorney Parish said they do not have to put it out for bid.
“You do not have to put those things up for bid as long as 2/3 of the council approve the expenditure,” he said. “It sounds like you had a conversation and you agreed to pay them a certain amount and now you are getting approval of the council and letting the public know. It is not wrong to get bids, but it is not required.”
Next item on the agenda was the approval of Drew and Ralph Riley as caretakers/mowers for the Rex for the 2026 season starting on March 1. They took care of the Rez last year and one alderman asked if the city was required to put the job out for bids again or could they just reappoint the Riley’s again this year since they had done a more than satisfactory job last year.
“I think we should table it until we know what we want for this year,” Pope said.
Alderman Gage Giberson agreed.
“I think we are going to have to get with the Park Board and get everyone up to speed on what we want done,” he said. “And because we won’t meet until the end of February, we will have to hold a special meeting to approve the caretakers.”
Parish said if they do decide to put it out for bids that they need to make a bid sheet so everyone is bidding on the same job.
Henline asked if they have to put it up for bid if they are satisfied with the job that was done last year by the Riley’s.
“If you have a 2/3 approval of the council then you don’t have to put it out for bid,” Parish said.
The council approved the purchase of a new chemical scale for the water plant. Water Plant Supervisor Chris Ford said the current scale, which sends reports to the EPA every month, is not reading correctly. The cost of a new Vega unit will be $2,600.
The council also approved the purchase of a new Variable Frequency Drive (VFD)for the high service pump at the water plant. Ford explained why these are important and noted they do not currently have any.
“When these high service pump motors turn on, they turn on full force and when they stop, they stop full force,” he said. “The VFD allows the motor to slowly start up and slowly stop, causing less wear on it.”
There are three high service pump motors that need a VFD. Each VFD costs $2,947 and the installation is a whopping $3,500 each, more than the cost of the drive itself.
“If the did them all at once they said they would give us a deal,” Ford said. “But it wouldn’t be a very extravagant deal or anything.”
One high service pump motor has 19,000 hours on it and the other two have 18,000 hours on them. Ford said they should have been rebuilt when they had between 10,000 to 12,000 hours on them.
The council decided to purchase one VFD at a cost of $6,447 for the VFD and installation. They also approved the purchase of one new motor at a cost of $5,254, also with an installation fee of $3,500 for a total of $8,754.
The council decided to take the old motor, that is being replaced with the new motor and have it rebuilt at a cost of $2,600. The council made a motion to approve an expenditure not to exceed $16,000.
The council had a discussion regarding missing executive session minutes. It is required, by law, that all executive session minutes be recorded and councils typically review those executive session minutes every six months to a year to decide whether to open those minutes to the public – which they never do.
When City Clerk Dawn Weckman went to retrieve the executive session minutes to present to the council members she couldn’t find any prior to taking over from prior city clerk, Kala Wahl, who abrupty resigned upon the seating of new Mayor Jim Riley.
“We don’t have any minutes, no files or anything in the computer,” Weckman said. “I can’t find anything prior to May of 2025. I did a search of the computer and found nothing and I looked for paper copies and found nothing either.”
Alderman Speeks asked if she had contacted the former city clerk to ask where she might have put them.
“If we contact the prior city clerk, she said there is a fee to talk to her,” Weckman said.
Speeks, who was the former Roodhouse Police Chief, said it was a criminal offense not to have those records.
“My recommendation is that if she does not cooperate with us then we should contact the States Attorney to pursue an investigation and possibly pursue criminal charges,” Speeks said.