Township leadership shakeup: Incumbent supervisors in Algonquin, Nunda lose reelection bids

Algonquin and Nunda townships will have new leadership this spring after their incumbent supervisors both lost their seats in Tuesday’s Republican primary.

In Algonquin Township, Supervisor Randy Funk – whose tenure was marked by contentious relations with township trustees – lost to political newcomer Richard Tado, who beat Funk by about 20 percentage points in unofficial results.

Nunda Township saw challenger Mike “Shorty” Shorten beat incumbent Leda Bobera-Drain by a similar margin. Shorten is a McHenry County Board member who was just reelected in November and who, in a relatively unusual move, plans to retain that seat while also serving in his township capacity, even though the supervisor role under Bobera-Drain was effectively a full-time job on its own.

Although most locally elected positions are nonpartisan, the township candidates run by party, and in McHenry County, they are dominated by Republicans. In the case of the Nunda and Algonquin township supervisors, no Democrats or independent candidates have filed to run in the April 1 consolidated election, so Shorten and Tado are the de facto winners.

Reached Tuesday evening, Shorten said he was “fairly happy” with the outcome. He said people are looking for a change and are looking for something different.

Although Shorten previously was a Nunda Township trustee from 2012 until he was voted out in 2017, he said he plans to approach the supervisor role with a “beginner’s mindset.”

He said he plans to work and collaborate with the township board and other officers, and serve taxpayers “in a way that makes sense.”

Often the target of critics who say they have outlived their usefulness and should be abolished, townships are a form of local government with the main services of providing property assessments, financial assistance to those in need and road maintenance.

Although relatively low-profile compared with other locally elected positions, the townships in some cases pay better.

As the pay currently stands, Shorten, for example, will earn a higher taxpayer-funded salary from the township than he does as a County Board member, for which his compensation is $21,000 per year, although with insurance and other benefits, that rises to about $54,000 per year, according to county records.

Bobera-Drain’s salary as supervisor is about $76,000, or about $100,000 with benefits, according to township records.

The Nunda board already has approved a raise for the supervisor, which will go into effect in May. For the term running through 2029, the supervisor is set to get a 5% pay increase in the first year and 2.5% increases every year after that.

Shorten, however, has said he intends to make the supervisor role part time and supports a 40% pay cut for the role, although it’s unclear if that will result in savings of payroll costs to the taxpayer or if the township will need to hire more staff to complete tasks that Bobera-Drain has handled.

In Algonquin, the supervisor’s pay is about $50,000, but officials have voted to lower that to about $30,000 after the election, which Funk before the election said he saw as retaliation by the board.

The pay situation was only one indicator of the tensions among township officials that saw the board censure Funk nine times over the course of his term. Trustees who censured Funk accused him of operating without trustees' approval on matters such as paying bills, appointing an attorney and transferring money to the general assistance fund. Funk also was censured for claims that he withheld general assistance information from trustees and for “unprofessional conduct and lack of respect and fairness,” according to township documents.

Funk took issue with the censures, saying that they were retaliatory attempts to smear his name when he was simply trying to do his job within the powers granted to the supervisor by state statute.

Most of Funk’s informal slate also lost Tuesday. The opposing slate – Millie Medendorp for clerk; Danijela Sandberg for highway commissioner; and Teresa Sharpe-Decker, Theresa Fronczak, Robert Becker and Eduardo Aviles for trustee – appeared headed to victory. Results remain unofficial until they are canvassed within the next couple of weeks, and there still are provisional and mail-in ballots to be counted, but with turnout as low as it was – about 3% of registered voters cast ballots across three townships that had primary races – it’s unlikely the remaining count will affect the outcome of the supervisors contests.

Tado, while celebrating his victory in Fox River Grove on Tuesday evening, said he was “really proud of the people that supported me. I am honored to be the next supervisor of the township. It’s going to be so much nicer.”

Funk said in a text to the Northwest Herald on Wednesday that he was “not interested” in commenting about his defeat. Bobera-Drain also could not be reached for comment.