SEQUIM — The final four candidates for the Sequim city manager position came and went, and the seven City Council members are having two come back in again before making a decision that the mayor says will be discussed in open session.
Before the council makes its decision on a permanent city manager, another interim city manager is likely to be named.
Linda Herzog, Sequim’s interim manager since December, will work her last day on Wednesday, so on Monday night the council will hold a 5 p.m. study session at the Transit Center to appoint another interim chief.
Mayor Laura Dubois expects council members to discuss tapping City Attorney Craig Ritchie to step into the gap, she said.
The council plans a closed, executive session at 5 p.m. Tuesday in the Sequim Transit Center, to re-interview, in person, two of the four finalists for the permanent city manager post.
After that, Dubois said, the council will call an open meeting to deliberate.
“When we make our final decision, it will be public,” she said.
Dubois said she hopes the council will settle on a new permanent city manager then.
But “we’re going to take our time,” she added.
Visited this week
The quartet of candidates — Steven Burkett, consultant with Management Partners Inc.; Mark Gervasi, manager of Tillamook, Ore.; Subir Mukerjee, who has worked 17 years in Olympia’s city management team; and Vernon Stoner, former manager of Lacey and Vancouver, Wash. — visited Sequim on Tuesday for interviews, city tours and a public reception.
The council went into a closed executive session to weigh the finalists’ attributes Tuesday night.
But instead of emerging to decide who is the best man for the job — as council member Bill Huizinga and Dubois had predicted they would do — the council set a second executive session to talk again to two of the candidates.
On Thursday, Huizinga emphasized that all four impressed the council with their qualifications on paper and with their face-to-face interactions.
“I don’t think we can make a mistake,” whomever is selected, he said.
All under consideration
The choice for a permanent manager will be a difficult one, Dubois said, since “we had top candidates,” recruited by Waldron & Co., the Seattle firm the city paid $20,000 to search the nation.
Lane Youngblood, who is assisting lead recruiter Tom Waldron in this process, said none of Sequim’s four finalists is off the table.
“Two candidates are receiving second interviews,” she said, because the council members are “going to dig deeper.”
Once the council decides on the one, Youngblood and Waldron will negotiate his pay and benefits.
The salary range was set last spring at $100,000 to $130,000.
The manager will receive standard benefits, Youngblood said, but on a severance package, “the council is going to have to give us some direction.”
Severance pay
Severance pay has been a hot button in the Sequim council chambers since Bill Elliott, who was fired in May 2008 for what some members called a “laissez-faire” style that no longer suited the city, departed with a $152,318 settlement.
In 2006, the City Council altered Elliott’s contract to include 12 months’ pay, $96,324, in the event of his dismissal. That council included Walt Schubert, Paul McHugh and Huizinga.
Dubois, who took office in January 2008, has called Elliott’s package much too rich for Sequim.
Huizinga, who is in his eighth year on the council, added he doesn’t expect September to be an eventful month at City Hall.
It’s October, when the council hopes to have a permanent manager installed, that will present a major challenge: Sequim’s 2010 budget and a projected $850,000 revenue shortfall.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
