After working at the city of Aurora under four different mayors, Chief Management Officer Alex Alexandrou is heading to retirement.
Alexandrou, who is in his 25th year of working at the city and 34th year in the public sector, will serve out his last day working at the city on May 13. That’s the day Mayor-elect John Laesch, alongside newly-elected and reelected members of the Aurora City Council, are set to be sworn into office.
“I think it’s time,” he said when asked why he is retiring. “I’ve been doing this a long time.”
The job can be “quite a pressure cooker at times,” he said, which “casual observers of local government may not understand.”
His current job, which has basically been to be the city’s manager, has been a 24/7 position, he said.
It’s the relationships, both with other city staffers and with colleagues in other communities, that Alexandrou said he will miss most about working at the city of Aurora. The city has been fortunate to be part of the Illinois Municipal League and the DuPage Mayors and Managers Conference, which has “done a lot of great work together as a group effort,” he said.
But Alexandrou will also miss the “certain energy and adrenaline” when responding to a crisis or when a task needs to be done quickly, he said. That’s because he is still a risk manager at heart, he said, which is the job he was first hired for at the city of Aurora.
It was former Mayor David Stover who hired Alexandrou as the city’s first-ever risk manager, and he also asked Alexandrou to be the interim human resources director in the last 18 months of his administration.
Alexandrou was then formally appointed to lead the human resources department under former Mayor Tom Weisner, who was elected after Stover.
The city went through a significant reorganization because of the 2008 recession, Alexandrou said, and so he ended up as the head of the city’s administrative services department. He served in that position, managing city operations like HR, the city clerk, IT and more, until he was given his current job as chief management officer by Mayor Richard Irvin in 2017.
“I’m eternally grateful to all the mayors I’ve worked for,” Alexandrou said.
At an event honoring outgoing Mayor Irvin and many from the mayor’s office on Tuesday night, Irvin said that without Alexandrou, his big ideas would have been nothing but words on a piece of paper.
“There’s people that you meet in your life that are just extraordinary, that are outstanding, and you realize that without that person, it wouldn’t have looked the way that it looks now,” Irvin said.
Alexandrou told The Beacon-News that he has helped to do “really transformative things” because Irvin gave him the opportunity.
Some of those things, which he saw from idea to execution, include the transformation of the Fox Valley Mall, the redevelopment of the old Copley Hospital into Bloomhaven and the redevelopment of downtown anchored by the Paramount Theatre, he said.
He is proud to have played a part in changing the reputation of Aurora, he said.
Another thing Alexandrou said he is proud of is how the city “weathered so many different storms,” such as the deadly mass shooting at Henry Pratt in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest.
Chuck Nelson, who served under Irvin as his previous deputy mayor and under Weisner as his chief of staff, said that Alexandrou is an “aggressive learner” with strong leadership, organizational and communication skills.
“There are so many things that define Alex,” Nelson said. “He’s good to have in your corner because he’s a problem- solver.”
None of it, Alexandrou said, was done alone. He has been proud to work with the city’s “tremendous team” and “very talented professionals,” many of whom he sees as good friends, he said.
While his job involved supporting the mayor and making sure the city was aligned on important things like public safety, economic development and education, it was also about delivering the city’s “bread and butter services” to residents, according to Alexandrou. He said those are things people may take for granted, such as 911 services, EMS, police, drinking water and city-run parks.
“All that takes constant attention,” he said, “and that’s not counting the unexpected that may happen every day.”
Alexandrou said he is proud of all the city departments, and specifically called out the police, fire and public works departments. The administration pushed them hard, and they deserve all the credit and compensation they get, he said.
When it comes to dealing with a crisis, Alexandrou said none do it better than the city’s team, and that includes the Aurora Police Department, Aurora Fire Department and Emergency Management Agency.
“Sometimes you have to be over-prepared, because it’s not a question of if, but when,” he said.
As for what’s next, Alexandrou doesn’t yet know, he told The Beacon-News. First, he’s going to take some “well-deserved time off” this summer, he said, and then start looking, but he’s “not in a particular hurry”
“We’ve been through a lot the last four years, so I’m looking forward to spending some time with family,” he said.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
