Port Townsend City Council appoints deputy manager role, appoints King

Published 1:30 am Friday, August 7, 2026

PORT TOWNSEND — The Port Townsend City Council has approved a path forward to fill the soon-to-be-vacant city manager position.

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.

During Monday night’s city council meeting, council members approved the approach the city will take to fill the position.

They chose what Director of People and Performance Cynthia Shaffer described as Approach 2, Option A, or a “deputy city manager transition model.”

“That would mean prior to the current city manager’s departure, we would look at appointing the public works director to a position of deputy city manager, and upon the city manager’s departure, council then appoints the deputy city manager to serve as interim city manager,” Shaffer said.

With their vote Monday night, the council approved creating that deputy city manager position and promoted Public Works Director Steve King to the role.

“We don’t have that current classification, so we would need to create a job description and also do some salary review to determine what that looks like, present that back to council for consideration,” Shaffer said. “And prior to departure, the city manager may initiate recruitment for planning for the public works director’s position. And so there’s a domino effect of the number of changes that would be occurring.”

After the appointment, the interim city manager would then manage the recruiting process for the public works director position and the deputy city manager position would remain vacant while the city manager recruitment process is underway, she said.

“And then, following the appointment of the new city manager, the interim city manager would transition to the deputy city manager position to provide executive leadership support and assist with implementation areas that council has,” Shaffer said.

In city documents, the advantages of the deputy city manager transition model were noted as the model provides continuity before, during and after the leadership transition, it increases executive leadership capacity to support strategic initiatives, it allows the new city manager to focus on organizational leadership while leveraging institutional knowledge, it supports succession planning and long-term leadership development, and it retains institutional knowledge.

Considerations for the council in regard to the approach are that the creation of a deputy city manager position requires council consideration of organizational structure, budget and long-term operational needs, the council needs to clearly define the deputy city manager’s responsibilities, the council needs to determine how responsibilities will be divided between the city manager and deputy city manager following the transition, and the council needs to determine ongoing funding for the position.

Other approaches were discussed, but the council was in favor of this one.

“Option A is really the only option that I think makes any kind of sense, because it reserves maximal flexibility as a marginal additional cost, but it doesn’t result in Steve being effectively fired under options B and C,” council member David Faber said. “I think option A is far and away the only option that makes sense to me.”

Mauro assured the council that the other department heads have discussed taking on the interim city manager role and are in support of King in the position.

“I’m in a unique position to help the city and help this transitioning just because I’ve been in government a long time,” King said. “I’m entering into this as an opportunity to serve the community, the good folks that are here, keep the good work going in public works, not by being the public works director, but by having the knowledge and background to help public works transition well.”

Faber’s motion to select option 2A also directed Mauro to bring back to council a job description and salary schedule for the deputy city manager position.

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