On Sept. 30, Rob Bahan clocked out for his last day as Winnetka’s village manager – and the following day, Oct. 1, clocked in for his first day as strategic development manager for Winnetka.
The career civil servant is not quite done with the North Shore village, where he’s spent the last 15 years in the top job.
He’s trading his office in Winnetka Village Hall for a work-from-home position, where he’ll assist with the hiring process for a new deputy village manager as well as planning for a new stormwater mitigation project and electricity plant generation study.
Josie Clark, a spokesperson for the village, called his new work a temporary staff position that will last through March.
Deputy village manager Kristin Kazenas is taking on the village manager position.
“It’s a little bittersweet to hand it off, but it’s absolutely the right time, and if I can continue to contribute and help the village succeed, that’s gratification enough,” Bahan said last Tuesday.
Under Bahan’s updated employment agreement, amended by Village Council on July 9, he’ll continue to consult on village matters while assisting Kazenas with recruiting a new deputy village manager and staff professional development.
He’ll also continue to work on a series of long-term capital projects that began under his tenure, including the latest phase of the decade-long West Side stormwater project, and lay the groundwork for new infrastructure projects including another stormwater project on the village’s east side and a study examining Winnetka’s electricity plant and the village’s future for energy generation.
Bahan described his role as backfilling for the village manager during the hiring process for the new deputy.
“We don’t want these projects to stagnate while we’re getting back up to speed on staffing,” Bahan said.
He’ll continue to be paid his village manager salary of $25,375 per month ($304,500 per year) through the end of March.
Bahan’s retirement benefits will include 36 months of health insurance coverage, the payout of his remaining sick and vacation pay and a one-time payment of $82,700 to cover the tax liability for a forgiven loan the village provided him in an initial compensation agreement.
Regarding that payment Clark said, “As part of his initial employment agreement in 2010, Rob was required to relocate to the village. To facilitate this, the village provided a home loan to support his purchase of a Winnetka residence. The agreement included provisions for principal forgiveness, based on length of service and achieving Council established performance metrics. When loan principal is forgiven, it is considered taxable income. Therefore, the Village Council approved Resolution R-63-2025, which authorized a one-time contribution of $82,700 toward the resulting tax liability.”
The former village manager was instrumental to laying the groundwork for the many infrastructure projects he’s now passing forward, according to one former village president.
Christopher Rintz, a longtime Winnetka trustee, was a member of the committee that hired Bahan away from Clarendon Hills in 2010.
He said Bahan came to Winnetka as part of a “new age” of municipal managers who thought about local government in a more sophisticated manner than their predecessors. Bahan spun engineering out of public works and into its own department, created the deputy village manager position, and built out the village’s human resources department, Rintz said.
Bahan quickly perceived the need for the village to improve its stormwater mitigation, particularly after record-breaking rainfall led to widespread flooding across the Chicago area in July 2011.
“Literally everything he planned in his first two years of employment at the village, he spent the next 12 years implementing those changes and refining them,” Rintz said.
The village manager was similarly skillful in navigating a battle of wills that sprung up around stormwater throughout the 2010s, Rintz said, advocating for his vision without being “sullied” by local politics.
Rintz’s successor, current Village President Robert Dearborn, calls Bahan the “ultimate professional.”
“He’s very detail-oriented, very organized,” said Dearborn, who joined Winnetka’s Village Board in 2017.. “He can dissect large issues, complex, capital, data-driven issues, down to a science, and he can deal with day-to-day issues just as well.”
Dearborn singled out Bahan’s work on the West Side stormwater project, which installed collection and holding tanks at Crow Island School, New Trier High School and Winnetka Golf Course.
He credited the long-time village manager with coordinating agreements with the village’s park district, area schools and Cook County and securing more $30 million in grant funding to bankroll the project.
“It was an enormous project that took an enormous amount of time dealing with many, many people,” Dearborn said. “And Rob was able to navigate that, and to really great success.”
Other major efforts in Bahan’s tenure include launching Winnetka’s economic development program and several streetscape projects focused on the village’s business districts.
He says he’d like to see the village continue to update its infrastructure and work on additional redevelopment projects, citing the demolition and rebuilding of the JP Morgan Private Bank at the corner of Green Bay Road and Elm Street.
Bahan said he’s particularly proud of the Winnetka Music Fest, which started in 2017 and is “still going strong” aside from a one-year interruption during COVID-19 lockdowns.
The former village manager was feted at his last Village Council meeting Sept. 16 by Winnetka trustees, department heads, and municipal managers from several other communities – the latter group’s appearance a decidedly unusual event, according to several village officials.
“Probably what I’ll miss most are the people,” Bahan said. “I’ve really enjoyed working with our staff at all levels. They’re really terrific at what they do.”