By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
Ortonville- At the regular meeting on Monday night, the village council discussed the resignation of Village Manager Dale Stuart, effective. Jan. 22.
No reason for Stuart’s departure was provided by council.
The discussion included what the village council could do to make the position more desirable, since Stuart only kept the position for a year and a few months.
“Obviously what we’ve been doing doesn’t work well,” said Melanie Nivelt, councilwoman. “So if we keep doing the same action, we get the same reaction.”
The council voted 7-0 to send the issue to the personnel committee to review qualifications for the position and decide what they would like to see from the next village manager.

“If we’re going to hire someone, we want to do this right,” said Kay Green, councilwoman. “We’ve had really, really good managers in the past. If you get a good person in there, they will do a job for us.”
The position of village manager has been held by three different people in the last three years, and this was a concern for members of the council.
“I think the pay that we’re paying the manager is more than sufficient for one square mile of village, it think it’s probably closer to a 40 hour a week job by the time they do evening meetings and whatnot, but I’ve been in the village six years, and the last four or five managers we’ve had in the last six years kind of all had the same consensus,” said councilman Keith Dylus. “That there’s an issue with the way the village council deals with the manager, which needs to be addressed, and there’s also some issue with personnel in the office which needs to be addressed. I think those two points need to be addressed prior to bringing in a new manager.”
The council agreed to bring the issue back after it goes to the personnel committee to decide on next steps.
“We have to figure out what we need to fix before we bring someone else in,” said Tonja Brice. council president