SEQUIM — On its second try at hiring the chief who will guide this town forward, the Sequim City Council moved quickly, taking just 20 minutes to “evaluate the qualifications” of candidate Steve Burkett — and a few more minutes to choose him.
The council voted unanimously Friday afternoon to negotiate a $120,000 annual contract with Burkett, the 64-year-old former manager of several larger cities.
Most of the issues he’s dealt with lately have been financial, Burkett said; a financially strapped city is what he’ll confront when he takes Sequim’s helm Oct. 19.
Erik Erichsen and longtime council members Walt Schubert and Bill Huizinga agreed Friday that they need Burkett’s financial navigation abilities.
“He mentioned several times that he did everything he could to support and carry out the decisions of the City Council, and that the only time he would ever push back was when he felt what was being done wasn’t fiscally responsible,” Erichsen said.
“He’ll make sure any city he works for stays solid.”
Asked to leave Shoreline
Buckett was asked to leave his job in both Shoreline, a suburb of Seattle, and Tallahassee, Florida’s capital.
In Shoreline, which he managed from 2001 to 2005, he was pushed out by a freshly elected council majority.
“It was like what happened in Sequim,” the newly hired Burkett said in an interview Friday evening.
In Shoreline, a newly elected council majority extracted Burkett’s resignation in 2005; in Sequim, freshly seated council members Erichsen, Susan Lorenzen, Ken Hays and Mayor Laura Dubois voted to fire Bill Elliott on May 5, 2008, saying his management style wasn’t what they wanted for their town.
The key issue around Burkett’s departure from Shoreline was a Highway 99 improvement project, something Burkett advocated and the new council opposed.
The new members “said their values were inconsistent with mine. I agreed,” Burkett said.
Since his ouster, Burkett has worked with Management Partners Inc., a consultancy based in San Jose, Calif., that advises municipal and county governments.
Burkett was also asked to resign by the City Council of Tallahassee, where he was manager from 1994 to 1997.
“I grew up in Washington, worked in the West for my whole career, and then [Tallahassee] gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse to come there,” to run the city of 140,000.
“I was like a fish out of water. There was a completely different political culture there,” Burkett said, and the ethical model didn’t suit him.
So he stepped down and moved to The Woodlands, Texas, a master-planned community he managed from 1997 to 2001 before moving to Shoreline.
Burkett’s town-to-town employment history didn’t faze Sequim’s council members.
“City managers tend to last an average of four to six years before a new council comes in and kicks them out,” Huizinga said.
“The perception is that they’re too closely aligned with the former council.”
Burkett has “all the qualifications and knowledge and commitment,” Huizinga added, to serve Sequim well.
Back in August, Burkett was passed over for the Sequim city manager post, though he was chosen as one of two finalists the City Council called back for second interviews.
The other finalist was Vernon Stoner, a veteran of several state agencies and cities including Vancouver, Wash.
On Sept. 1 the council voted 6-1, with Erichsen the lone dissenter, to make Stoner their next chief.
The members planned to sign his contract Sept. 14, but a few days before that, a Peninsula Daily News investigation revealed Stoner was named in a sexual harassment tort claim by his executive assistant at his previous job, chief deputy in the state Insurance Commissioner’s Office.
Shellyne Grisham, Stoner’s assistant for about a year, filed her claim May 14. Stoner was fired from the Insurance Commissioner and worked his last day June 15. The claim was settled for $50,000 on Aug. 31.
Stoner, who had said he was not aware of the claim or the settlement, is now suing the state, contending that age or race discrimination led to his dismissal. Stoner, who is 61 and black, is seeking up to $20 million in damages.
On Sept. 21 the Sequim council voted unanimously to look for another city manager. They reconsidered the other two finalists still interested in the job: Burkett and Mark Gervasi, who is manager of Tillamook, Ore.
Craig Ritchie, who is interim city manager as well as city attorney, researched court records for what he termed “nasty lawsuits” involving Burkett or Gervasi, and phoned staffers in the cities where they have worked.
Waldron & Co., the Seattle firm Sequim paid $20,000 to recruit a manager, also conducted further checks on the candidates’ histories.
After hearing reports from Ritchie and Waldron and choosing Burkett Friday afternoon, the Sequim council went into a second closed session to hammer out his salary and benefits.
More than an hour passed before the members emerged with a contract that includes a up to $10,000 to cover relocation costs for Burkett and his wife Bobbi, a homemaker, to move to Sequim from Edmonds.
Burkett will also receive a $900 housing allowance for up to nine months or until his Edmonds home sells, whichever comes first.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.