Naperville’s City Council is fully populated again.
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A brief stint on the dais lies ahead for Tom Miers, president of Naperville Bank & Trust and an avid local volunteer. He was sworn in Tuesday to complete the unfinished term of former council member and newly installed state House member Grant Wehrli, who stepped down Jan. 14. All eight City Council positions are scheduled to expire after the April 7 consolidated elections.
“I was very honored to be asked,” said Miers, 63, who has lived in the city since 1970. “I think we all need to contribute, and whatever I can do to help in three months, I’m happy to do.”
This is Miers’ first time in what is normally an elected office, after being approached to fill the temporary post by “a couple of council members and the mayor,” he said.
He’s never run for office before, but he has held appointed positions on boards and commissions elsewhere, including those of the Indian Prairie Foundation, the Housing Advisory Commission, Sunrise Rotary, Naperville Jaycees, Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce, Edward Hospital Foundation and the YMCA.
It’s not Miers’ first council encounter, however. He said that happened in 1972, when the group was meeting on the second floor of what is now La Sorella di Francesca on Jefferson Avenue, and he was a young staff member at the YMCA who had a request to put before city officials. As a newly anointed councilman Miers was reflective about that appearance as he waited to take his new seat on the dais.
“That was a long time ago,” he said with a smile.
Twitter @scarlman