Search for new city manager begins

Published 1:30 am Friday, July 31, 2026

PORT TOWNSEND — A workshop discussion kicked off the Port Townsend City Council’s search for the next city manager.

The council met Monday night to discuss the process for selecting a new city manager.

Current City Manager John Mauro has been hired to take a similar role for Bainbridge Island and will start the new position on Sept. 8. His last day with the city of Port Townsend is scheduled to be Sept. 4.

Port Townsend governs under a council-city manager form of government. The city council hires the city manager who serves as the chief executive officer of the city.

For the council’s workshop, Director of People and Performance Cynthia Shaffer prepared several documents for the council.

“There was a lot of information in that document that I provided you,” Shaffer said. “One was the transition and recruitment discussion framework, so we’re running a lot of different options and then also potential topics for discussion and also some decision points for consideration, so we can walk through that document, that would be helpful. And then in addition to that document, I provided you with a job description that was created back in 2018.”

Shaffer also provided the council with updated state law which removed the requirement that city manager must live in the city unless the city requires it, which Port Townsend does not. That was changed in 2022, she said.

One piece of information Shaffer did not provide was the salary and benefits for the position, which she said are still being determined.

Shaffer laid out four transition considerations for the council to think about.

The first is to immediately appoint an internal candidate to work as an interim city manager during the search for the permanent role. The second approach is to have an extended interim appointment with a deferred recruitment for the permanent role. The third approach is to have an interim appointed while a concurrent recruitment for the permanent role is happening and the fourth approach was to have an external candidate chosen as the interim city manager while the recruitment process goes on.

Through the council’s discussion, consensus was on approaches two or three. Because the meeting was a workshop, no official decisions were made.

Several council members mentioned Public Works Director Steve King as a possible internal candidate for the interim role, although support was also given to opening the interim role up for applicants from among all city department heads.

Part of the recruitment process will be updating the job description, Shaffer said.

“What does the community look like? What is the requirement of that city manager position?” she asked, providing questions that should be asked while the job description is revised.

Mayor Amy Howard has had discussions with the Association of Washington Cities to see how other cities have handled hiring city managers, she said.

“Last time, we did pretty well with public engagement and introduced the candidates to the public relatively well,” she said.

Mauro suggested really defining what a city manager does and what the city council does to help avoid confusion during the process.

The council also discussed the possibility of hiring a recruitment firm to help with the search. Many council members expressed support for that idea.

“In terms of helping to focus you on a decision, I don’t know of any city, at least recently, that’s done an executive search for city manager without using a recruiter,” Mauro said.

Some council members expressed the desire to limit the candidate search to Washington or the Pacific Northwest as a way to get candidates who are already familiar with the laws of Washington and maybe even the Port Townsend area.

The council appeared to be in agreement that the next step that needs to happen, preferably before Mauro’s last day, is to get an interim city manager into position.

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Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.