e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e all right good e or good afternoon everyone I'm too used to saying good evening um welcome to the Treasure Island Board of Commissioners special meeting for Friday April 19th it is 2:37 p.m. and we'll call our meeting to order and if everyone can please stand and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance flaged States indivisible andice right thank youone roll call please commissioner Toth here vice mayor doctor here commissioner Min here commissioner dicki here mayor Payne here here all right um we'll take public comments for any agenda items we do only have one item on the agenda today um seeing no public comments we'll move right into our items of business so the purpose of this special meeting is to discuss candidate evaluation for our city manager semifinalist selection so I'll turn it over to our city staff or Doug whoever wants to take it away or go for it okay great thank you Gary appreciate it thank you so much I appreciate everybody can hear me I hope at this stage I think you need to make Doom to make sure that you can hear yourself in the room because at home if you can't then they can't hear you well either I'll defer I I think you just need one of those mics right or does he need to speak into both of them okay is that better yes you're good with the sound check at your end excellent great okay thank you mayor appreciate it um well for I know I have not had a chance to meet all of you but some of in person uh but certainly I want to introduce myself my name is Doug Thomas I an with strategic government resources uh we are the firm that was engaged by the city uh a little while back to start to assist in working with you and your staff and you as elected officials in the Recruitment and ultimately selection of your successor city manager so it's a pleasure to be back in Treasure Island it's a beautiful day as it always seems to be here get chamber Commerce weather and uh congratulations on being in your new city hall as well last time I was here it was still in a state of of construction getting close uh so Gary tells me that most of the bugs are being worked its way through at this stage of the game so congratulations on on that relocation as well thank you um so the purpose of today's effort is to bring you up to speed since I was last here to talk about um how we conducted the search uh the review of the candidates and the demographics of your candidate po that applied for the position um but the meat of the today's agenda will be going through a review of candidates that we feel are highly qualified for your consideration uh as semifinalist and so as we work our way through that I'll outline a process that I think generally with most of my communities works pretty easily to help you kind of get to a smaller number as we work our way forward but uh with that let me just kind of walk you through a PowerPoint presentation here so you get an idea of where we're at so as I said first and foremost I'm going to highlight what we did to market the position and give you some background about the candidates that have applied the demographics of that um then I'm going to go through a list of candidates that I think uh that we believe in looking at the material that you've put together or that you've approved in your position profile brochure in which you've talked about the academic credentials experience size types of projects things of that nature that would be important and we've tried to use that as our lens because that's what you told us your looking for as well so with that we've narrowed that list down to a smaller number of candidates however you've all received uh last week I believe it was we had sent a complete list of all the candidates that have applied so you've also had a chance to look at their cover letters and resumés and things of that nature so what I'm going to do is go through the list that I've got or what feedback we've received from the city as a result of your review of that um but before we ultimately get to a point of selecting semi-finalist I'm going to ask is there anybody that maybe I haven't identified in this presentation that any of you might have seen in that background material that you might want to discuss and we can bring up those candidates equation um from that point we are going to be basically working through a process to help you get ideally around 8 to 12 folks that you want to learn more about as semi-finalist and I've mentioned to to Gary just before the meeting that sometimes this seems like it's harder uh than it needs to be but I I recognize that I do a lot of it so it's easier for me to get to that list but you don't know a lot about everybody at this stage the game so sometimes it's kind of hard to get a hand on and that's okay that's the nature of where we're at I'll describe what how we're going to work our way down to ultimately your your finalist but I recognize there's always a bit of uncertainty about this and all you're trying to do at this stage is to say this is somebody I I'm interested in I'd like to learn a little bit more about because at the next stage we're going to learn a whole lot more detail about their style their experience how they're going to bring things to their what their background experience will be relative to your opportunities your challenges here going to hear about why they left their previous positions any controversies they're involved with and their words and we'll also have a chance to kind of unack that as well so I just recognize I know this feels a little bit like you're on sand that's shifting below your feet but we'll trust me we'll we'll help you get you through that um after we've gone through that and as I say the goal is to get somewhere between 8 to 12 folks that you want to learn more about um I'm just going to highlight kind of what's coming next what those semi-finalist are going to be asked to do and I'll start to also outline some things about what your as we work with your staff about what the um the finalists will then go through but then also what your on-site interview will be not looking for decisions on all those factors today I just every time I meet with you I want you to kind of be thinking about what's coming next and what I'm going to be asking you to do at the next level as well and then lastly we just want to make sure that we've got everybody on the same schedule with their timelines and the calendars and the dates for the interviews and the dates for our subsequent meetings take place as well so so with that in case uh I describ the process that you're about to step into is a triage and the triage is really very much like a funnel we're at the top of that funnel so right now we know a little about a lot of people everybody's applied now some of these people I'm going to be able to tell you I know more about because I know them either personally professionally or maybe they've been in another one of our searches where maybe they were a semi-finalist or finalist so in that case I've got a little more Intel on some of those folks than others but the bottom line is for the most part you're going to going to be at that top of the funnel and you just know a little about what they've told us about themselves uh and now we're trying to make an assessment of what that looks like as I said the next step of the equation when you narrow this down and you select your semifinalist we're going to start what the analogy of kind of peeling the onion skins off you're going to get into a much deeper understanding of their background their experience their skill sets their challenges whatever controversies they're involved with the types of things that they would like to see in a salary and benefit package although I've got some highle information about that and questions that they may have for you in the process and at that point we're also going to have some video interviews and you'll have a chance to see how they present themselves and react to some certain questions as well and then as I said we'll start to also pull some additional media material on these candidates so at that stage now you're starting to peel those onion skin levels off and you're going to learn a lot more about them and that's the nature of it you're at the top the next level you're going to learn a whole lot more about those 8 to 12 folks and then um even though the candidates may think they're done they're not quite finished at that stage of the game there's some additional work we ask them to do when we come back you will select ultimately uh out of that 8 to 12 folks typically somewhere between three to five folks that you would like to interview and bring in for an on-site interview process and at that point that's when we start investing some additional dollars and resources in this budget uh to do criminal history credit background verification their education verification of any credentials they may have if they're involved in any legal lawsuits anything of that nature driver slice checks criminal records all those sort of things are done we also then undertake uh a 360 evaluation process for um their references supervisors subordinates peers so we can kind of get a better understanding of what that looks like and we'll ask those candidates also to do some additional work to prepare for the interview as part of the on-site then we also do a second level of detail work called a stage two media search where we actually have several people on our staff that actually review wherever your finalists have lived and worked as an adult um through impa or whatever information would be in their their social media their newspaper articles TV articles whatever that may be and um many of these folks that have been in City management for a while and Gary will appreciate this we have a long list of things because we're always in the news as city managers uh sometimes it's about what happened the meeting before or a dedication of a dog park or the budget or whatever it would be but often times it will also identify maybe a community who's going through a controversy you can start to see how the manager P reacted to cuman we'll flag those of things that were controversial uh as findings but the rest of it is basically the normal run at Mill but you'll have all that information we know that at the end of the day uh all your your residents and your media and everyone else is going to Google and do all the research on these Camp so our goal is to make sure we get that information to not CAU so as I say we're at the top of the funnel we're going to learn a little bit more and then by the time we get to the end that's when you really are going to spend all your time and resources on those accounts that you think are supposed to so in terms of the marketing this position uh I will tell you as somebody that's got well over 35 years in City management and close to nine years now with sgr um the recruitment world today is a whole lot different than it was as recently as four or five years ago postco uh all of us aging Baby Boomers that uh have moved out of the active life of full-time employment uh has created kind of a vacuum and when you look at the demographics of the number of people that are retiring especially in the public sector Arena and you look at the number of people who are eligible to kind of step into those roles there's a big gap um many of the Baby Boomers stayed longer through the Great Recession and through covid and everything else and now they're saying I finally mean it we're done and the other challenge is that there are a lot of folks that um are it used to be that people would Aspire when you were an assistant city manager or department head you always aspired to be the city manager that is not the case anymore a lot of people look at that position as the tip of the spear and I'm told by many folks including my former deputy and assistant managers that the best jobs ever had was the assistant manager because I have Spears in my back coming at it so those are some dynamics that created some interesting challenges in the recruitment World despite that case we have a pretty good Outreach with folks that in the public sector as you can see in this effort uh we advertised this position through our own social media and marketing components and our own website uh close to 34 days um a good portion for uh about a week it it showed up as the top of the banner so it captures a lot of attention whoever's looking at our job Board site would be able to see the Treasure Island position um we as I say have very aggressive uh social media marketing component so we we advertised and promoted the position and Linkedin and Instagram Facebook Twitter all those formats as well and then above and beyond that we have folks that because we're one of the largest public sector executive recruitment firms in the country we have people that actually subscribe Dr blast alerts in the city and county manager position so uh those folks actually received those that subscribed to that most almost almost 7,000 folks getting bled about this opportunity as well a lot of exposure there and then you authorize us to place ads in State national and various trade associations and then above and beyond that um we have at any given time probably close to 100 searches going on and we got thousands of candidates in our system we go back and look at comparable type communities to what you're facing here size Geographic landcap and we send out information maybe top tier candidates and some other searches that might be interested in this opportunity is at the end of the day only one person gets H there's not a lot of so outre was very strong um and quite frankly I'm running I was running three searches here in Florida and um you were in the middle of the sizes in that area in terms of population but you actually attracted more than the other two candidates pool so congratulations I think that speaks well for your community you can see we had a total of 61 candidates um that ultimately applied for this position I was very pleased with the number um we a lot of people reached out and contact us about this opportunity um I flaged there because I'm giving you the demographic of the total pool we did have a couple candidates that have withdrawn they've accepted other positions or things have changed in their community and they decided they just want to pursue another opportunity now so the demographics I'm giving you now is with everybody that has applied including the two that all the through as you can see um most of those candidates come from the state of Florida that is not a surprise um almost all the searches we do the host state will generally generate most of the searches for natural reasons but also Florida is one of the top three states in terms of council manager forms of governance California Texas and Florida are top three so you always get a lot when you advertise in Florida but you can see uh a pretty broad perspective um basically across the across the country including two uh individuals one individual from Canada one individual from India so when I said we cast a wide net we didn't necessarily advertise intern Al but people do find our our our websites our Outreach and the positions there the demographic pool as you can see from this slit this sheet um out of the 61 largely male U more so than usual we're seeing an increase in the number of female candidates one of the reasons we really do try to Market to non-traditional candidates and females in particular uh about a third of our searches have resulted in a female being um selected in the city manager rule so we we expected to get a little bit more in this one we're just we're not for whatever reason uh and then you can see the demographic mix of the candidate pool that went through the process as well so as I mentioned at the beginning our process is basically looking at what you've told us is important in your position profile brochure and evaluating and using our skill that as a lens and then our skill as a recruiter and someone that understands City management to help narrow this pool down but we're not going to know everybody so we're going to have to make some assumptions about some folks and so we're not going to always know these candidates and their style and their philosophical approach is the problem we'll learn more about that at the next level so the evaluation and the rankings of folks that I've got for your consideration are basically at that high level with the exception of where I know a candidate or had them in a previous search can you bring the mic a little bit closer to you sure is that better yeah okay super um so the process that we find works best generally with our clients are as I go through and unpack these candidates uh I'd ask you to Simply jot down their name and I'm asking you to put three one of three numbers um if you are interested in that candidate as a potential semi-finalist you think they're a strong candidate you'd like to maybe learn more about them I'd encourage you to just put a one by that candidate's name if a candidate that maybe doesn't necessarily resonate as strongly with you as a as as someone that you gave a one but you might be interested in learning more about them um I'd encourage you to put a number two next to that candas name and then there will be candidates that for whatever reason just don't resonate with you at all and that's fine as well just put a three at that point and what we'll do at the end of this process after we've gone through all the candidates including any additional ones that you may want to add to the list um I'm just going to basically go through that list with you I've got an interactive spreadsheet that I can basically capture your numbers and we'll get a sense of where you are and typically that gets you down to a smaller pool and we'll just see what that looks like because there's some interesting numbers if you like many you're going to have a couple candet that many of you like or majority of you like as a one you going have some that as a kind of consensus candet in ones and twos um you're going to have a bunch of that probably may be threes for you uh but it's important to kind of get a sense when you get to that 8 to 12 that you've got a sense of are there major differences where three or four of you have a one and one or two of you might have a three we like to just talk through that to recognize to make sure that you're comfortable with proceeding with that candidate that you could consider them if you know more about them as well so um just consider that as we go forward everybody understand that that process one is top two is maybe three is no and it's like a golf score low score win and I'll walk you through what that looks like as we go further so um without any particular order I don't want you to place any judgment that the first candidate is the highest ranked it's largely by alphabetic order and their first name so don't don't attribute anything beyond that um but I wanted to uh just unpack these candidates and what you're going to see in this slide is an example example I'm going to you've got I believe you got or you may have it in front of you you may have looked at it before you've got their resumés and cover letters so I'm just going to provide some highlevel overview of these candidates and if there's questions you have about them that maybe I haven't addressed uh to the extent that we have that information we be glad to address that as well and we can do that either interactively mayor or if you want to wait till we're all done and come back and react to a slide we can we can go back and it's necessary so all right so the first candidate uh for consideration is Angie Stone uh Angie has worked in a variety of positions with the town of Hilton Head Island another Island community obviously up in South Carolina to the north of us a little larger community at a 38,000 in population um she currently serves as the assistant Town manager and overseeing their Community engagement division she's been in that capacity since 2021 uh in that function she oversees uh marketing Communications cultural Affairs technology and Innovation departments and aligning their strategic plan with their operational functions as well uh has been obviously part of her title was community outreach uh which I thought was an important element here improving community events and and engagement with the community and your day-to-day functions and also oversees a destination marketing organization or DMO uh which is done by a private sector kind of a chamber that promotes the business and elements they very much obviously you can imagine in Hilton had a a very large tourism type based Community uh other position she had held uh was a human resource director from 2018 to 2021 that would be similar to what you would see in most HR departments and then served prior to that as a senior HR administrator from 2001 to 2018 so all her kind of professional public experience has been with Hilton Head Island uh she's indicated she's obviously loves to be close to the water and also is interested in stepping into a lead role as a manager at a size community that she feels comfortable as well um I won't go through their backgrounds in terms of Education you can all see that going forward there will be some acronyms that I'll try to unpack as we go through if there's some or if there's been some specialized uh senior executive training type experiences that I want to highlight do you know how big the city of um Hilton Head is yes it's um 38,000 that any any if they're a public organization mayor we tried to identify their population uh as part of this slide there so 38,000 next candidate um Brian Kelly um Brian Kelly is coming from um the city of Sandy Utah uh presently serving is the director of administrative services in that capacity as a Chief Financial Officer a Chief Information officer and the vice president overseeing their HR functions as well been in that role since 2013 um and prior to that served as an HR and Management Services director with that City and then assistant of the city manager for a period of time from 1999 to 2002 so a little bit about the size of um and the operations in Sandy City um it's about a $225 million operation with um obviously serving as part of their executive team um has handled um you know a number of public Private Financial deals for economic development efforts that was an element of experience that you were looking for as well uh was part of the process that got them to a AAA Bond rating the highest rating you can get for financing operations uh and handled a variety of of Erp and techn ology interface processes during that of time also was involved um with doing a a long-term budgeting Finance plan a 10-year financial plan and an element here that a lot of cities have been moving is to doing business intelligence and decision support analysis and tracking good data to help you make good strong decisions based on analysis and Performance Management type data as well so that's another Trend that we see as a best management practice um you can Envision um this position in uh prior to that was city manager with a city of Washington Terrace Utah Community about your size a little larger uh for from 2002 to 2003 um and recognizing you'll see that Gap he was at one point an assistant city manager went to become a manager and then came back to back to uh Sandy City uh Sandy Utah as well so uh during that period as a city manager uh was involved in some economic development and uh New Town Hall construction of a new town hall some new office and Retail type spaces as well during that window next candidate is Carrie Vargo um Carrie U most recently served as the chief executive officer for R Consulting up in Lin Pennsylvan lines Pennsylvania served for a few years in that capacity she had indicated that uh that was a kind of a uh transition work and she had always planned to return back to the public sector Arena and she's now back in the marketplace looking at positions in particular uh for City management type opportunities I've not had her other than this search and a couple other searches I've got in Florida that she's been an applicant for as well um so uh R uh Consulting um is basically a a Consulting engineering and U planning type Focus largely working with public sector clients so working with elected officials appointed officials and working with public sector organizations uh pretty good size organization about 215 employees budget of about $22 million basically serving as their lead person but prior to that had served in a couple capacities as a Township manager I do a lot of work up in Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania is a commonwealth and has a Litany of local government operations from Burrows to villages to townships to cities and counties and everything in between a variety of Special Districts so when you think of townships for the most part they for the most part they are very similar to City operations they run fire police they may not run utility services in some cases but for the most part they operate like a a smaller City would be and these populations you can see are between 8 to 12,000 in the area so in um in Upper uh ersan Township uh for that position uh was involved in obviously the planning focus of of budgeting uh they did win their uh GFA award for the annual financial report uh and we're also involved in new software implementation processes and some it type improvements there as well uh their position in as uh car's position as Township manager in Thornberry Township Pennsylvania community comparable in size for a couple years uh did at that point initiated a strategic planning process uh largely based on a a comprehensive plan that was something that was identified here uh and then prior to that you can see though not marked here uh was involved as a law enforcement officer with the codville police department that's all Coatsville in that area and the the Thornberry town ship is in Chester County that's all outside the um U Philadelphia Pennsylvania metropolitan area I do a lot of work with Chester County so I know some of these communities a little better than others do you know um she hasn't been at Arrow since April 2023 what has she been doing since then all I've all I've got is uh this this fits where we know a little about a lot of candidates on the process just indicated looking to get back into the public sector Arena so I suspect she's been applying for positions I've got her in a as an applicant in a couple of my searches so I know she's looking to now get back that's best I can tell you in here okay next candidate um Charles Anderson uh Charles is currently the deputy city manager in Great Falls Montana only have 60,000 of population has been in that capacity since 2017 um I know uh I was asked to speak a couple years ago uh with the city manager in great fall so I've been in that Community it's a lovely Community a very full service operation obviously a long way from Florida um but then the nature of the game uh I'm very impressed with the operations uh he was actually pting together a variety of of communities from the the great PLS area if you will to bring them in to talk about Recruitment and Retention strategy so I got a chance to meet a number of community Representatives when I was there at Great Falls a few years back I was impressed with the city and what I saw in terms of the look and the feel and the the the uh The Innovation that they were doing that operation um and so in Great Falls um he serves as Deputy city manager um their organization total is about 525 full-time employees uh 17 different departments and divisions and agencies and their overall budgets about $147 million uh 38 of that being in the general fund the rest being capital and utility operations uh has been involved in negotiations in collective bargaining and franchise agreements developer uh of public private partnership type work uh and is also uh overseeing their it division uh and coordinated activity um for citizen engagement through a Citizens um the first ever um Citizen Academy program to yet folks engaged in the organization prior to that was a public works director in the city of steam bro Springs Colorado uh Community about double your size steam bro Springs obviously a ski Community a lot of Tourism a lot of activity uh high demand for uh services and expectations of of quality services um as although he Public Works director overall oversaw about 113 different employees uh and had responsibilities for Transit engineering water Wastewater streets Fleet environmental and Airport divisions uh his budget was about $13 million with about a $6 million Capital Improvement budget and the other part there uh that you may note in his background is involved with lean Six Sigma and looking at their operations that's a way of evaluating performance and efforts and bringing teams together and evaluating how you can be more efficient and effective with your function so I uh was impressed with that work as well uh and then prior to that was in the military um as a command Chief or senior director in a couple different uh military bases uh for different periods of time and then obviously had background in military programs as well is that a civilian position or is that a um the uh this is one where I've got some acronyms coming after that the PMP has has a masters and bachelor's as noted but the PMP is a project management professional that's where you've gone to get receiv training to oversee project managements and and flowcharts and processes it helps in terms of of overall keep the projects and capital projects in play as well next candidate Kurt freeze um Kurt is going to be coming in representing uh as you can see uh planning and zoning and and um um Community Development type back ground I will tell you that in my experience we see a lot of candidates that come from Community Development departments that aspire to become city managers um the nature of that business is you tend to interact with all your departments police and fire and and um code enforcement and you tend to work obviously with your utilities and transportation and do a lot of Economic Development work and so you kind of touch a lot of aspects of the city operations um so another Waterfront area Buford uh Buford South Carolina um about double your size as a community development director has been in that role for about a year um and U currently involved in um a comprehensive code rewrite um dealing with different boards and oversight functions in that capacity I know you're going through that with your raised TI and trying to determine you know what that looks and feels like is a significant work there as well and then prior to that served as community development director in berthout Colorado um from 2015 to 2022 um and in that that point they were dealing with a lot of growth as you can see in their background they said that the town almost tripled in size since 2015 with about 300 new homes built each year now I don't expect you have that type of growth here but growth management is always a big issue especially here in the State of Florida as well Serv as an executive director and ex assistant director executive director in Henderson Kentucky City County Planning Commission and Henderson Kentucky for four years um you'll see in a variety of other states we have mpos and tpos here sometimes they cut across multiple counties and other states they are very often two or three or five member or six member counties and so it's basically serving as a regional Planning Group for a very large board and the executive director would have a lot of insight with their board of directors and dealing with Transportation Planning and Intermodal activities and and planning and zoning and technical assistance to a variety of communities that would be located within their districts uh and then as you can see as a zoning specialist and administrator in Covington Connecticut or Kentucky and also as own administrator in Hy County South Carolina much larger earlier in his career as well um the aicp credentials is American Institute of certified planners uh which is a credential status so you can be a planner not be an aicp but it's develops a certification process there so commitment to continuing education professionalism Doug before you go off of Kurt Kurt and a number of the other applicants had a limited amount of time in their current positions he's only been in his position for 13 months I did see like a pattern where there were many of the applicants that only been in their position for some even just as little as three three to four months right uh any I mean that that's pretty quick it so I didn't I don't recall seeing anything that raised any red flags with regards to Mr Freeze uh we did the initial uh screening on the background but I will tell you that um there's two elements involved here sometimes it's a window of opportunity when a a given type of community comes into play that you may have been looking for that all of a sudden will drive their desire to do it I will tell you um for those of us that are icma members typically if you accept a position they like you to stay in that position assuming you've committed and they've honored their commitment to you for a period of two years but I often sometimes find individuals saying this is an opportunity I really would like to explore and they don't always come available so um that's the best I can tell you commissioner at the moment that's certainly one of the things that we do ask as we go deeper into the process saying you know have you if you've left in any short period of time what the circumstances would be and what are the drives for those decisions and and what's their loyalty level towards their exactly new employer as well I I'm very sens of the fact that no one wants to go through this process on an ongoing basis I believe me I love my clients but I don't want to have to come back and redo your search in a short period of time to help you so I fully appreciate that and that could be a factor and just say some of these candidates have been with communities for a long time some have moved around a little bit and some are in shorter shorter stages so thank you fair question though yep uh okay so I think that was with Kurt so Dana uh Dana showning uh also a uh a planner by trade I have had Dana as a semifinalist in some searches but not of recent it's been several years since I've had Dana in a couple of my searches but he has as I said been a semi-finalist and a couple other City manager positions a few years back um presently so presently he is the city manager in Tuttle Oklahoma comparable siiz Community to you here in in Treasure Island uh in that fashion overseas a full service city um police fire Emergency Management um handles uh their budget is about $26 million overall operation uh has done collective bargaining negotiation processes there as well and overseen a variety of Capital Improvement functions as well prior to that served as an assistant city manager and director of planning and operations with Sweetwater Texas uh community of 11,000 for a few years from 2019 to 2022 uh at that capacity oversaw code enforcement Park Cemetery streets Central Services Aquatics Golf Course solid waste mement and Airport functions um and um you can see some of the backgrounds in this material including a rewrite of a comprehensive plan uh was also the um director of Community Development with witcha Falls Texas for two-year period um oversaw code enforcement housing Administration neighborhood resources uh historic preservation board they went through a downtown R revitalization project during his tenure there and then also served as director of planning and development services in the city of abalene Texas from 2015 to 2017 uh similar type of functions and responsibilities uh they would have in the previous positions and then lastly on this slide was the director of community development in Duncan Oklahoma from 2 to 2015 um same sort of General Services had done a comprehensive rewrite of their plan had done some Corridor studies as well and I know those are factors of consideration for you here as well um so um he is also a uh aicp member and a certified professional manager CPM uh is a program of additional training where you typically go through a better part of a year of training with a variety class usually with a local U institution a variety of other local officials that go through that as a team roing and training experience here's a another example though of somebody that moves around quite a bit it looks like the average tenure for the last nine years has been about two years in each job before he moves around quite a bit yep yep and I I would tell you that was one of the factors as I said he's been a semi-finalist in a couple of my positions in earlier years um but that was you know that D duly noted there yep and we're about a similar size to Tuttle so do and their budget is our our budget is slightly larger but I wouldn't consider this like a huge jump up so that's what stood out to me as well I understand if someone's hopping around jobs moving up the ladder but when you're making lateral moves um and and none of these have been Waterfront communities either you know but so that's a factor so may be a concern uh in terms of wanting to come to be in a different different climate different part of the effort sometimes I will find you'll see because you've seen the the cover letters in many case I don't recall there's a lot here there's some that have made some reference about why Florida at this time that you've probably seen but it's amazing to me I find folks that are in various stages of their career and some want to come because they got aging parents or they got kids or they got grandkids or they used to work in the state they' worked out and it's a mobile profession they're looking to come back there's a variety of stories that um sometimes we hear about the front end most of the time by the time they're semi-finalists I'm trying to get that out for them to get a better sense of what is about this particular Community this station absolutely uh next candidate Jacob Smith um Jacob uh was previously the city manager in Fruit height City uh Utah uh for a short period of time U difficult transition there and I I apologize I should have mentioned the front end of this I think I mentioned uh if I did not I apologize the the nature of this position is there's a lot of controversy that comes with being a city manager and so there's a lot of stuff and in many cases the joke that I will often say is city managers are sometimes hard and fired with enthusiasm but rarely by the same boards um meaning you can do a lot of things right with one board an election occurs or a transition in the politics occur and you find yourself out of favor and so it kind of comes with the territory so I if I forgot to mention that there are a variety of things with that that we've done some initial work on that you know candidates are going to find themselves in controversy with and and um we just recognize that sometimes comes with a territory and if there's enough there if there's concerns if any of you started doing Googling on any of these candal I can certainly address what I know but at the point is just recognizing we typically delve into that at a higher level in the semi-finalist level than the finalist level unless they've done something where they've been convicted of a crime or charged or something of that nature um that's certainly a different different circumstance there so um Jacob had indicated there was transitions in Council some small town politics had affected and found himself out of favor in that effort but as you can see served for uh close to 11 years in a previous position so uh sometimes that happens you just kind of find yourself in the wrong wrong side of the fence in in a window there so but in um that period in time uh was involved uh with in Fruit height City Utah a strategic plan uh to try to deal with their General plan accommodations did some rewrites of their personnel policy and tried to also improve their budgeting process there his position prior to that as an ACM and a finance director was cville City Utah um from 200 12 to 2023 obviously had a longer tenure there worked as a second ranking executive for the city uh left uh LED efforts and Personnel finance budget HR it Municipal Court risk public relations Recreation museums and economic development so a pretty broad Suite of responsibilities uh and also work with regional planners and businesses for economic development type functions and activities as well um and then prior to that work with the state of Utah in their financing grants and budget divisions uh seeing larger budgets scale and scope before getting into local government next candidate uh I actually know pretty well uh as you know I come from Lakeland as a former city manager in Lakeland and um Jim Slayton is currently the um the city manager in one of our communities in pole county is the City of Lake Wales um Mr Dicky your comment here's here's another candidate that has been with one Community for a long time and has progressed up the ladder through that effort so I I've known Jim and kind of watched him uh grow professionally I knew his uh Ken Fields was the city manager prior to that and he was the assistant and promoted him up through the ranks so it was pleased to see him get to that role um uh Jim is looking to get to the Waterfront um po County we have a lot of water in Lake and Lakeland but we don't necessarily have a lot of we don't have a water like you've got water here and he's indicated he's looked at a couple opportunities where he could be closer to water and enjoy kind of a different quality of life there um so Jim has worked his way up from an IT director through all those different POS positions um he uh a couple acronyms here that I don't think we've seen in in previous candidates yet the IC CM credential is the international City County management association which is our International Trade Association most of us are members that are in this profession of that uh the CM designation is a credentialed manager which means that you go through a 360 evaluation of your skill sets it's a peer review you eventually get accepted into the program if you meet the qualifications and then you commit to at least a minimum of 40 hours of training training and every year You' got to document that and you're basically trying to refine your skills and enhance your skills in areas that you may not necessarily be in strong in at one point or other so you're going to see icac CM a couple times you mentioned that in your brochure being something that was of interest to you as well the other piece it's the first candidate that's been involved in one of these trainings there are a couple senior executive training programs that are really well known in our profession one of them is the University of the Welden Cooper uh program at the University of Virginia it's an intensive program it's only multiple months where you actually are offsite and you're being involved and trained at the highest levels with a variety of other peers from local government officials and so you're going to see that pop up with a couple of your candidates have been through that so always like to highlight that once again a commitment to to professional development not with the CM credential but also with executive training experience as well um so I what I can tell you about uh his experiences all uh professionally in the local government Arena has been with Lake Wales um they have about 237 uh full-time employees their budgets about $98 million also oversees their CRA operations um tax increment financing type functions as well um during that period he's grown and devised a couple of different departments including a Horticultural department and a marketing and Community engagement Department I thought that was important because another element you really got an Engaged Community here and people that kind of have that and understand that importance of that function is pretty pretty effort the other functions are um I think hopefully self-explanatory but Jim has press an interest in getting to the water uh but still would like to stay in the State of Florida uh next candidate uh Jeff milanich um Jeff is most recently from the city of Boseman Montana obviously a larger Community uh I don't know if there's any Yellowstone fans uh in the group that's where Boseman is allegedly uh you know headquartered or based in the process so high tourism high quality life high demand of services activities um so uh Jeff um unfortunately left in the midst of a controversy was involved in a zoom call with a colleague that was he as indicated was illegally uh recorded and uh some disparaging comments were made and ultimately he decided it was best for him to resign and move on to another opportunity as well so U but during that period of time obviously you can see a lot of work that he was involved with there uh the fourth largest city um it's certainly noted as one of the world's greatest places to live in terms of its climate and it's actually they have a lot of sustainability and climate action activities taking place um doing a lot of work with assisting in their legislation and lobbying and advancement of their legislative agendas um the next position is's with u was a deputy city manager and Chief Operating Officer with the city of Fort Collins Colorado obviously a much larger Community also out in the mountain range from 2014 to 2020 and I I want to highlight that because um I'm very familiar with the city of Fort Collins uh when I was in Lakeland we were one of the first cities to do priority based budgeting before it became kind of a best management practice where you link your prior your your strategic planning initiatives to your budgeting process you're fending things in an appropriate way um and his manager at the time and myself and two other managers were on a national stage talking about the value what we do and and Al I did not do the search he eventually left just recently about a year and a half ago to accept a position of the private sector um but I I got to know Fort Collins pretty well they're doing some very bold very Innovative functions and and um Jeff was obviously on the ground at that level doing that Bas budgeting elements as well um so a larger Community clearly um budgets about 2400 employees about a billion dollar annual budget uh home to Colorado State University uh also a Trip Away uh Bond rating Community as well and as I said was involved in the performance excellence and the the priority based budget process there so that's recognized as a management practice also done some private public private Partnerships I know that that's been an interest as you look at your Economic Development elements there obviously different type of economy but in the same token understanding how that all comes together and then prior to that was an assistant city manager in Surprise Arizona also a larger Community um from 2008 to 2014 uh had about 736 FTE about $170 million operating budget uh and handled that responsibility many times assistant managers either do internal service or external he focused on that capacity as well he is also a credential manager um and and looking to kind of pick up for his next opportunity Jeff could you elaborate at all on the circumstances behind his uh resignation at his current position certainly um the as as I have seen the the information on it and he's also giving me some background information about the position saying that he realizes that's likely to come up um he had he was talking with a colleague on a zoom call and uh not within the city a colleague elsewhere and um made some dispar comments about some things that were happening with his community with some of his council members and um as it's been described to me it was illegally recorded and then leaked out and that became a controversy um and I you know he he owns it he respects it says it would I've learned from that obviously would never have anticipated this I suspect all of us have been in some fashion probably made a staging comment about someone else um but probably not wor the thought would ever become a public comment and so um recognize in that's you know he he's kind of leaving in that which is why he's looking for the next opportunity at this stage I could not not Advance him given the work that he and his communities have done I felt it was a fair effort and as I say what we normally do uh there will be other controversies to some of your other candidates as well some point it's sometimes a bridge too far but if you like what you see my encourage is to at least consider some of these folks as a semi-finalist let them tell their story to you and then you can make a determination is that a bridge too far to Cross or not and every Community will have a different level of tolerance for that but as I said the body of work and the communities he's working are exceptional communities with exceptional leadership and he's just got snagged on uh next candidate uh comes fairly close to you uh Jeff shoubridge I don't know if any of you know Jeff uh in the past so uh Jeff has worked with me off and on he's been looking to kind of find his next opportunity uh he served as a first Town Administrator over in rington Shores uh here in this part of the state a smaller Community you for a period of time um I was impressed with the type of work he was trying to do there I've talked to him on a number of occasions both at fccma conferences he's looking for his next opportunity going forward but Jeff would like to stay in this area if possible um knows kind of the pelis county Marketplace as well uh has done some improvements in terms of their Community ratings for their uh female Insurance ratings and things of that nature but also encountered trying to restructure a lot of financing programs especially in the building zoning department um they're not really an Enterprise fund but they you've got to keep those dollars that accounted for using for building purposes and there was some desires to move those Dollars around and kind of got sideways with his board on on that issue um so uh is was left Readington Shores once again it was a firsttime town Town Administrator for that Community as well um he was previously a city administrator in Madison Lake Minnesota another smaller Community for a few years as well um had served also as their um fun as their Finance director and a zoning administrator you can imagine a small community it's kind of a chief cook and bottle washer you tend to do a lot of rol that function and then also served up in Groveland up in the central part of the state as a uh city council member for a year before accepting his position in Madison Lake uh he expressed an interest in getting into local government which is why I got his master's degree and then moved forward and he's still looking for that next opportunity after Readington Shores so from Readington Shores did he resign or was he uh my recollection was he resigned mayor yes there was you know was one of those pressure situations and in many cases managers will often say I'll resign for the betterment of the organization want uh next candidate uh Joe gah um so Joe most recently was the city administrator in Marshall toown Iowa um let let me kind of unpack Joe a little bit different than just chronologically so I've spoken to Joe um because I was trying to get a sense of kind of his background and experience you can see he worked for a good portion of his career in Iowa in some relatively smaller communities and had very successful runs in that window um he had the opportunity Iowa doesn't have a whole lot of of city manager forms of governments in big cities and so he saw the opportunity to kind of grow his ability to move into a larger City and went to Dickinson North Dakota so pretty big jump from 4,000 to about 25,000 but that was the motivation there so I want to tell the story and then I'll come back and unpack the the positions um and um then went from there um was recruited to look at the position um to go up to uh the city Aberdine South Dakota um a comparable siiz Community a little bit larger and uh was then recruited then to come back to Iowa um and since he was part of the Iowa retirement system decided that maybe he would come back and work in Iowa and get his his final um efforts to um bestest in the Iowa system the state retirement system um so but the goal was to move into a larger City and he has told me when I've chatted with him before his goal was ultimately to get after he got um his certific or after he got vested that he wanted to come to Florida and spend his last 10 15 years in in in service in Florida as well that was just kind of he and his wife's background desire to do and so um so let me kind of unpack the circumstance so he was in Marshon Iowa uh and ran into a challenge with um some politics there about not wanting to necessarily keep the Town Administrator form of government process with elected officials and ultimately uh got sideways and said it was time to to step aside and move from that position um he was immediately asked by Aberdine to even think about coming back to be their manager but their positions were filled and all that he really enjoyed the work that he had done in Aberdine South Dakota so um you know he's had a body of work that has been pretty steady up until most recent and it seems to be an explainable circumstance so that's this the relatively short period of time that you see uh in Marshon but in that window uh he did see about um 150 staff members had total operating budget about $80 million uh the position in Aberdine South Dakota um was uh 275 staff members total budget of about $100 million been involved in some major capital projects in water and wastewater type prodctions also involved in collective bargaining agreements and then when he was in Dickinson North Dakota uh had a about 200 staff members and about $70 million budget and also was involved in some downtown Redevelopment in Dickinson um and um let's see where else I want to go with it there from uh city manager in smaller communities in Charlton uh Charlton Iowa and also the city administrator and Public Works director in Woodbine Iowa relatively small communities you can Envision you know kind of functional Services they would be involved but obviously in a much smaller scale uh uh Joseph also has credentials as a credential manager as an icma member next candidate Kathleen Murray um Kathleen is um currently serving as a grant writer and administrator in the village of Freeport New York uh community of about 44,000 um and in that capacity overseas doing basically grants um for uh it's a waterfront Village so would have some Waterfront experience not this area of the area of of um you know to an ocean here but uh handling Economic Development infrastructure improvements water electric things of that nature trying to find grants and and overseeing grants and programs from there PRI of that served in a variety of capacities with the village of Rockville Center New York uh as a village administrator a deputy Village administrator and also director of Community Development I don't have the individual breakdown so I've just got that from 2011 to 2021 so about 10 year stretch in that capacity as well uh that was a full service government including police fire Public Works water electric accounting treasury Human Resources uh about 300 employees and managing staff about $90 million uh of annual budget activities also was involved in approving their bond ratings at that point Ken Griffin uh Ken is a candidate that was most recently involved in a search that I was doing for a county here in Florida and decided to pull out because he wanted to stay in this area he still has property as you'll see he uh has worked uh later you'll see he worked over in Hillsboro County and still maintains some property here but uh pretty strong candidate uh with a background in not only City management but also uh professional professional engineer here in the State of Florida currently serving as a director of Public Works and Utilities in Roxboro North Carolina um has been in that capacity um since 2023 um in that function uh he was is doing um s about uh variety of of infrastructure projects involving um $25 million wastewater treatment plant operation a $26 million gravity en forcemain type projects variety of storm water projects gravity sewer projects water sewer kind of construction Public Works type functions you would Envision his capacity as a director of engineering and facilities and capital projects and storm water utilities in s in Florida um from 2019 to 2021 uh all involving utility operations engineering um functions as well I know you have water and sewer provided by the county but I know you also do storm water here as well you have to interface with that group clearly as well uh served for a period of time as a principal manager and engineer with renal engineering here in Tampa uh it's a private sector Consulting engineering firm working with local government functions um and then um served as the County Administrator and utility director in King William County Virginia uh for a one-year period as well um and involved in that fashion doing uh it's in the Richmond uh Richmond Virginia area close to the state capital there uh doing you know traditional utility type functions um and overall Administration functions of the County uh was in King William County as a as County Administrator and utilities director for a oneye period and then also served as a director of Public Utilities and Smithfield Public Utilities in Smithfield North Carolina for a onee period so Engineers I will tell to your point as well engineering folks often move around a little bit more um Engineers are hard to find and when you get them um they often are recruited and moved on to other opportunities right now it's one search I hate to do when when my closest colleagues ask me to do a city engineer uh it's really hard to hire them right now because their their compensation is so much greater in their private sect um some other experience that I wanted to note he was a general manager of organization called bjwsa it's a regional water Wastewater and reclaimed water authority up in the southeast part of South Carolina for that capacity but I think the longest stint that I think that gets him back and why he's expressed and and ultimately withdrew from another search that I had because he wanted to get back to um this side of the State uh he served as the assisant County Administrator for infrastructure development and services and the director of operations and Manford here at Hillsboro County from 2006 to 2011 so a lot of oversight a lot of project management understands obviously um you know in Hillsboro County impacts of weather hurricanes all those types of functions as well a pretty extensive educational background a doctoral degree uh master's degree two master's degree engineering program uh is a credential manager and also a certified manager uh professional engineer uh certification here in the State of Florida Lawrence mcnaull Lawrence is a director of mission capability and a group called KBR Incorporated Houston Texas although he's working remotely at this point actually lives in Bowling Green Florida at this stage so as you can imagine a lot of work has done remote at this stage of the world um so in that capacity it's actually working with a lot of logistic type functions working with six different director reports 350 employees working in foreign and local National Labor um support roles for Airfield operations uh productivity security fire Emergency Services Emergency Management um filtering um billing and operational control center just a lot of organizational support and logistical type work as a contractor um to support the operations uh overseas prior to that capacity was a County Manager here in Hardy County Florida um then in that role from 2019 to 2023 when I saw some of the background and material on that he was actually hired to be kind of a change agent to help them go through a variety of changes and that created some challenges and issues for him that you're likely to read about later as well um and um part of that was a city manager in West Liberty Iowa smaller Community for about six years um you know smaller Community handling basically um West Liberty was uh 45 full-time employees 35 seasonal and about nine department heads in about a $15 million budget so a much smaller function and as a military obviously a Navy Army Military dep work before getting into public sector Arena next Michael SLO slac excuse me uh presently the Town Administrator with the town of Blandford Massachusetts small community been in that role for a year um has indicated that um he um is basically overseeing their functions their budgets day-to-day you know small town operation uh looking to get into a larger community at this stage was previously the business operations manager and Public Works director for the town of Enfield Connecticut much larger Community from 2016 to 2023 uh in that capacity had about $30 million Public Work operating budget and um reported and work directly with the town manager Council um served as the Town Administrator in Sterling um Massachusetts I don't have a lot of detail in that role for about four or a couple years and then also Town manager in the town of aold Massachusetts from 2012 to 2014 um Michael is an attorney uh by trade but also has a master in finance and uh has continued then obviously pursuing a public sector Arena as opposed to working in the field can you hang on one second just back need one second to resume if you're G to move around to kind of find the the positions there's some there's some gaps there that I'm assuming that he was involved in some uh just doing legal work uh because I can't I can't collect some of the gaps after about 2013 but his resume doesn't indicate where he's at in that regard so bullan his most recent one he's just says 2024 there hasn't been much of 2024 yet but right that's a very small community one exactly yeah thousand population so uh the sense there is looking to get into something larger um and brings kind of a diverse background I into the mix because of the diversity of a law background and and uh some of the other smaller communities you work with in a uh up in Northeast might interest here as so a had 8000 the city of athl Massachusetts 8,000 residents and Sterling both of those are about 8,000 in population good okay okay Patrick Kaminsky um I've had a chance to chat with Patrick uh on to learn a little bit more about his background as well uh Patrick most recently was uh the city manager up in Mount Dora Florida from 2021 to 2024 um once again if you've seen the background material was was was brought in to really do a lot of changes and was dealing with a lot of kind of financial constraints and trying to build some capital projects and issues um election occurred a different mayor came into effect um found himself kind of sideways um with a Direction with with the previous or I guess the current mayor at this point uh had a lot of Community Support ultimately decided to resign from the position uh when it was all said and done looking for the next opportunity uh if you look at the body of his work he's worked extensively in a couple other communities and and most recently gr 2002 to 2016 as a city manager was a very strong run the average tenure of a city manager nationally is about five to seven years it's the nature of nature of the game so sometimes you'll see in these smaller communities I I I know a little of Mount Dora they have gone through a variety of managers in previous years so there's certain Gary would know this as well there certain communities in Florida we know will go through them um so Mount door's had some stretches where they've been strong and then they've gone through some transitions as well so um it's it's a challenging Community I believe to to be man prior of that um so Mount dor obviously as you you can see in his background he's highlighted some of the things that he brought about some of the improvements uh had a lot of support I did see a lot of information about community support for him when he was going through some challenges up there and trying to retain him as the manager um but uh at the end of the day decided to resign and is now looking for his next opportunity the position in Cambridge Maryland uh that is any of you know the the Eastern Shore area of Maryland that's an e community so tourism Waterfront um you know those sort of elements people go from the DC metropolitan area and hit down to the Eastern Shore I've done some recruitment work and used to work in the DC area as well so has a lot of tourism activities and and flavor to it as well I think that would look and feel similar to you here um and then but obviously a smaller Community about 13,000 there and they had their budgets of about uh 112 employees and budgets about $20 million and then his position as a city manager in Thomasville Thomas toown Georgia from 2002 to 2016 a good a good strong run there um basically uh budget of about uh 25 million about 13 and obviously those numbers were different because of the years involved there would be a larger budget now would be in that stage of the game um so um you know has involvement with tourism type communities has strong involvement understands Florida marketplace clearly uh and is also a certified public manager of CPM purchasing manager excuse me certified purchasing manager in this capacity next candidate Patrick Marsh um I've had Patrick and a couple of my searches in the past and actually I've had him as a finalist in two searches but unfortunately the timing work didn't work out where we had conflicts where the interviews were going to occur at the same time he was doing consulting work and he had to be in two places at one time and had to withdraw on both of those so uh we know a little bit more about Patrick um and the work so um he's now he does live here in Florida um at this stage of the game he looks to wants to stay in Florida wants to continue in City management he served for a short period of time initially as an inum and then a short period of time in Fernly Nevada um there were some challenges there where there was some pressure to hire someone that council member wanted to do it didn't want didn't want to hire that person under the council manager form and decided to separate at that point uh but his most of his career prior to that was in W um in Wisconsin uh he served for a lengthy time uh from 2015 to 2021 in fitzburg uh Wisconsin as their city manager and then also served in the community of manona Wisconsin as a smaller commity in Economic Development and um City administrator um so give you some size and some dollars associated with Patrick's functions here um so uh in Fernley about a $49 million operating budget um handle day-to-day type functions of a full service city um the consultant work was largely doing interim work and zoning and planning and economic development work that he's done uh after he left fitzburg uh and fitzburg was about a 46 $6 million operating budget um and the work that he did as City administrator and economic development director in manona um about a 13 million budget that time with 12 different departments close to he is also a credential manager is a city administrator positioned the same as a city manager just a different term yes um valid question um it used to be distinction a city manager typically had hiring and firing authorities over department heads and City administrators didn't but that line is blurred based on the community um so some cases they were they have full Authority they're just called an administrator like a County Administrator might be versus a County Manager um but uh what we normally ask when we get to that level is who do you supervise what departments what are your oversight responsibilities so for purposes today I think you can largely interchange those two commissioner Bel absolutely and different uh in fact I think in Wisconsin as I recall there are only two or three cities that actually have city managers most of the most of the communities in Wisconsin I've got some friends that are up there are administrators and they do have full functioning Authority um next candidate Pat omen patri or Pat Omen um Pat um is most recently County Minnesota you're goingon to see Pat has a background in kind of planning and economic development largely in the Ed side of the equation that um I thought might be of interest here Pat's looking for his opportunity as well um brings about 20 years of experience in the public sector Arena so in is a most recent role in Becker County oversaw 10 different departments about 377 depart employees uh budgets about $68 million counties as you know will have courts and social services and uh other functions that cities don't have but the the skill sets are very comparable we see a lot of people moving from cities to counties and back and forth in that Arena as well there so don't let that scare you as well uh served a period of time just for a one-year window with skywater technology um it is a it's basically a Vestor owned semiconductor manufacturer basically was between positions and served in that capacity so not necessarily directly related to the positions here prior to that from 2015 to 2021 was the County Administrator in mil locks County and milaka Minnesota uh from 20 about 26,000 in population and they had oversaw functions of 264 employees about a56 million operating budget there as well um was involved uh in Minnesota and any of these positions at the lead role heavily un united states Collective bargain experience and functions and negotiating of those um this position as a city administrator and executive director of their housing Redevelopment Authority in the city of Moose Lake Minnesota uh smaller Community served in that capacity for a couple years as well eight different departments uh uh 57 employees and a budget um operating budget of about 5 million there in that in that particular capacity also oversaw um oversaw their Redevelopment Authority um dealing with housing and economic development functions um and then his position as director of Economic Development and executive director of their Economic Development agency and housing Redevelopment Authority in Carlton County Minnesota from 2005 to 2013 um and oversaw different County operations um work with 10 different cities 14 townships um and oversaw budgets about $10 million there capacity um the capacity here a couple different master's degree uh the edfp is an economic development financial Professor one of two credentials you can get through the international Economic Development Association so it's real strong in Economic Development programs as well Paul break as a candidate I've known uh for a long time uh before I came down to to Florida down in 2003 I spent 20 years up in Michigan was very active in the State Association in the league Paul um most recently that's why I got to know Paul way back when in earlier parts of my career uh but way back when um he he most recently was in the city manager position with the city of Royal o Michigan Royal O is a very affluent community in the Detroit metropolitan area upscale high level quality services programs um as you can see a larger community uh 57,000 in population look at the efforts he was involved basically about 150 employees I'm sorry about 330 employees about 150 part-time uh operating operating budgets about $220 million been involved in some of some public private Ventures up there I've been involved in some uh new city hall development complex and other U public facility type construction activities uh and also been involved in some sustainability and climate action plan activities Royal W went through a transition in their elected officials and Paul found himself out of favor in that regard deciding to resign prior of that he worked with the city of Morgantown West Virginia any of you are UVA fans would know that's a University of Virginia college town as well served in that role from 2017 to 2020 um there uh oversaw about 10 different department uh directors uh 275 employees full-time employees about 37 million operations been involved with waterfront downtown development actions there as well and then uh previous to that worked as a city manager in gron Blanc Michigan from 2011 to 2015 uh Grand Blank a smaller Community but uh I don't know if they still have it used to be the Buick open was in Grand Blank PGA event so they would have some tourism activity that would come in during that that that National event as well uh and in Grand Blank um I'm sorry I I bass one his his work in safe um safe built Incorporation work from 2015 to 2016 basically working with Technical and um training and planning services for local government operations up in Michigan for that onee period and then was in Grand Blank after that by mistake or prior to that Grand Blank was a N9 half million budget um 31 full-time 10 part-time employees and then was an assistant Township manager in Meridian Township um 190 employees about a $35 million operation at the time um you see um P Paul has both the Masters and Bachelors is a credential manager um the highest level of accreditation you can get uh from the um um Economic Development field is the um certified economic Community Development that's the CCD program also was uh involved in not one but two different senior executive programs the two Bigg e basically the University of Virginia that I spoke of earlier and then the John F keny School government dep University was involved in both and Paul's looking for his next next opportunity real strong cran Rob hilard um Rob as a firsttime candle I've not had him in my searches in the past presently serves as a city manager and Treasurer in the city of Oberland Ohio overland's kind of this Northeastern Central northeastern part of the state um Overland College if you may be familiar with that as well community of 8,000 it's been in that that capacity since 2016 um overseas police fire dispatch full service of local government operations water Wastewater um collection um storm sewer functions refuges the whole gamut of those operations and then prior to that served as the city manager and the clerk of the city of alagan Michigan uh from 2005 to 2016 once again full service effort including um downtown Street Service downtown Redevelopment marketing uh airport operations um elction for our district ambulance services um Scott uh Moy is the way it's pronounced um is presently the county manager at in wear County Board of Commissioners in we County Georgia um we county is just North of our Northline north of Jacksonville so the first major County if you will going north of of the Florida state line um so in that capacity overseas 15 different departments um has functions of full service U operation of a traditional County similar to what you'd find here um but is recognized obviously in a different state in Georgia um he served for a uh three-year period in a group called procure to pay or pay P2P operations um in Way Cross Georgia and in that fashion was basically handling um a window of of CH Supply chain division for the Mayo Clinic and helping them to basically identify their processing and payroll and and uh procurement and payment of of functions uh for vendors that work with them part of that was involved in a variety of local government and training opportunities one was the city administrator in Black Shear Georgia imely a little smaller than you from 2004 to 2013 pretty strong run there with about 42 full-time employees um oversaw fire police clerk technology Economic Development um Human Resources kind of the main gamuts of functions there and then also has served as an a junk Professor or an instructor with Coastal Pines Technical College since 2005 and uh prior to that was serving two different capacities in the city of Fernadina Beach once again up in the northeastern part of the State uh Waterfront area as well uh as a deputy city manager from 2000 to 2004 and then as the interim city manager during that period of 2001 to 2002 as well um and in Fernadina Beach at that time was overseeing um about a $76 million budget um 25 million Capital um including a golf course uh and a Marina and um full full service City I've known a couple of the managers that have served up in Fernadina Beach so I think you'd find some comparability in terms of that high they do a lot of um tourism activities there as well getting close folks joh got a couple more to go um Stanley Hawthorne is a candid that I know pretty well because I actually hired him as an assistant city manager when I was in Lakeland Florida he was one of my two assistant city managers so I'll kind of work my way back from that window um that's where I got to know him and he served in that capacity for 20 can you bring your mic a little closer sorry okay sorry so Stanley served um in as an ACM in my community uh from 2005 2011 largely oversaw the internal service funds and I mentioned earlier we were doing the whole priority based budgeting and strategic planning linking he was overseeing that program when we were involved with that function um Stanley left us to then go on to work with Lee Feldman who is a fair well-known manager here in the state was the president of fccma but also the president of the icma and he was the city manager in Fort Lauderdale had a chance to move into a much larger much more metropolitan area um and served in that capacity from 2011 to 2019 um Lee left and a variety of transitions have occurred he and many of the other folks that were with Fort Lauderdale similarly left he uh tried to strike it as a uh as a private sector Consulting world but the timing as you look at that window was right around the covid window and uh was decided that that window was not going to operate but he was trying to get into local government functions and and responsibilities there um from there he's worked in two what I would say challenging communities um I do a lot of work in recruitment uh up in the Hartford uh metropolitan area uh Bloomfield is a community that's gone through a couple man managers in recent years um a very challenging Community he was there for a couple years uh ran into some changing Dynamics on their Council Community really liked him wanted him to stay decided he would leave and move on the city manager in College Park Georgia obviously university community for University of Georgia um and um also went through some transitions there uh if you start to read some material there'll be some information about dismissals with cause I've talked to him I've followed some other materials In the Heat of the battle that was not the case he ultimately was allowed to resign and there was no cause found in the area so I'll just give you a heads up that you'll see some of that area I've talked to Stanley a little bit about that he he really wants to come back to Florida he's he's he's tried some places that were more challenging not that Florida isn't challenging I understand that but he's looking to come back to Florida he's got a a history before he came with us in Lakeland um and is looking to uh to basically kind of finish up his career he's he's still got plenty of years in his tank but wants to come back to territory that he knows and appreciates much better than the two last communities he's been in as involved with so um strong manager good good effort good experience um and U certainly understands Florida and certainly he went through us um in 2003 was my first year and we went through the hurricane season so we went through that as well as what you would imagine in in Fort Lauderdale with the Hurricanes experience there as well Taylor Brown uh Taylor is another candidate I've known off and on professionally um Taylor I've got to know him through fccma um he's presently serving as your as the exe director in Taylor County department Development Authority um he's kind of serving in that capacity after leaving the city of Perry uh he was involved as the city manager in the city of Perry when they went through as you saw in their background um uh they had a hurricane that basically came in and hurricane Adalia made landfall and basically impacted them pretty severely at that window they were in pretty heavy recovery mode and then uh three weeks after that Georgia Pacific their largest employer was announced their closing of their cellular Mill so talk about the double Wham and going through the challenges and issues so decided to leave Perry but he was asked to stay on in Taylor County to help them go through this transition with a recognition he's looking for his next opportunity so I have furrian experience certainly understands the Florida environment has worked in a variety of smaller communities here in the state um as you can see uh 2,000 to 4,000 in population has some Planning and Zoning background in his experience as well um so uh he is as I say looking for the next position after leing Perry and and kind of an interim role in the Taylor County department Development Department uh but in terms of scale and scope and Perry uh their budgets about $13 million about 85 employees uh full service type functions um and in the case of his position as city manager and May Esther Florida the budget um operating budget was about 6 million uh with about 45 employees as well involved there and um function in Trenton Florida uh budgets uh operating budget uh there was relatively small 2.5 million with about 25 employees next candidate um do not sorry Sor on the de What specifically is that an economic development entity yes I'm sorry thank you for pointing that out yes so basically and when I talked to Taylor about what he was involved with there in the function they're trying to figure out the Redevelopment of the plant and the impacts and all as you can imagine the larger employer all the tax base that goes as I understand it the um the um um um the Georgia Pacific is going to retain ownership at one point they were talking about maybe selling it or getting out of it all together and allowing the Redevelopment when I last talked to Taylor about week and a half ago the decision was they were going to retain the ownership of the property so now they're in this how do we how do we recover from this operation both with a hurricane recovery at the same time you're dealing with a major economic impact and labor impact so it's all Economic Development to your point though Ted Yates uh I had a chance to meet Ted a year ago at the fccma conference at that point he was the newly ad minted Village manager in Isa marada Florida down in the Keys um and he was looking to come in and do some strategic planning and programming elements and and make some changes there he was hired with that type of function and um any of you who' have been in the keys know that the keys is a different place to operate in certainly Waterfront and certainly Dynamics but uh politics have changed and he found himself looking for another opportunity so he's currently working with a private sector group there with a a business in in Isa marata but is looking to get back into the city manager Arena um his background is a little bit different than some of the other CS you've got he was the mayor of they call Mayor and public safety director in Ohio uh whether you're a city manager City administrator or a mayor if you have full CEO kind of responsibilities over the oversight of the function in Ohio they call that the public safety director so yes that includes overseeing police But it includes the whole gamut of the functions of of a local government so don't get don't get caught up that it's only over the police functions there uh but basically uh served as a strong mayor uh in that fashion and did that from 2015 to 2022 uh prior to that was an elected official uh with the Twinsburg City Council but as this as the mayor basically would handle all the DayDay functions and responsibilities of a uh of a chief executive officer and you can see in his budget there's material that he's got there um so just give me I'll go back to the position Alam marada so Isam marada was about a $30 million budget general fund of about 20 about 12 department heads about 100 full-time and part-time seasonal employees in Twinsburg um their budgets uh annual budget was about $45 million uh operating General funded about 29 million 13 different department heads about 250 um 180 full-time and 250 part-time seasonal employees full gamut of functions in aquatic centers Water Park Golf Course restaurant banquet centers all those sort of things so kind of a full service functioning city as well and um um Ted is also an attorney uh by by trade but has not been doing that obviously been operating in the local government Arena but has a law degree and served previous to his public service work as a uh as an attorney there were two candidates that um the uh I was asked to include in the in this list as well for presentation that were some of Interest the first one was Andreas bis bisos um Andreas has has served in a variety of capacities with the town of Colchester Connecticut community of 16,000 and you're going to see the term first selectman or chief executive officer um many right around the Hartford area there's a lot of town managers that operate under a Town Council or commission manager form of government but many communities in Connecticut operate under a traditional strong mayor former government and so instead of calling them the mayor they're called the first selectman and the first selectman just like in uh Ted yates's position is in essence your highest elected appointed official and serves as the CEO of the organization so hiring firing appointing putting the budget together all the oversight of the department operations and that fashion so uh served in that capacity for a couple years as a first selectman uh prior to that many of these communities up in Connecticut also have elected positions that provide insight into their budgeting or insight into their Public Safety operations and they basically are like an oversight Department working with the police department or the finance director and things of that nature so uh in Colchester he was elected position he served in that effort as part of their Board of Finance they're normally three to five members and they basically serve like an elected body working with the finance director to oversee their their operations and help them develop their budget uh and then was also serving in uh when Colchester as the economic development commission from 2009 to 2015 helping an economic development type functions part of that work in in education and Civics and training and programs there but there was apparently some interest at least having a conversation about his his background another candidate uh also coming from P County that was asked to incorporate into the presentation today is Tandra Davis or Tandra Davis presently the town manager um then in in the town of dunde uh that's over in P County over in my neck of the woods I do not know uh Tandra that well I know the name but I have not had a chance to meet her so I don't know her personally uh but served as the interim manager and is currently the town manager but prior of that also served for a year as the finance director so kind of moved into some different roles in a relatively short period of time in Dundee um so prior to that position position so give me an idea I think she gave me some ideas of numbers here let me grab that um I apologize you do not have budget numbers on on her operations um prior to that she served as the finance assistant director in the city of Fort me also a community in P County smaller Community also about 5,000 served in that capacity for a few years uh and then after that had worked in a variety of of private sector kind of accounting and finance type positions uh there also in po County and Leland Florida with a couple different organizations as well so let me stop there and I know we've gone through a lot of those folks um I want to are there are there any questions that we didn't address in any of these folks and then I want to ask you know we'll address those first or if we go back to to address any of those points and I also want to ask the question is there anybody that has not been on this list that maybe you saw in your material and if so we can bring up those uh that material as well I'll turn it back over to you for any questions you bring back up uh Joe Gau we're going pretty at that point inight he was not on your short list right I'm sorry if he's in this presentation he was part of my my recommendations for consideration yes you may have seen a list that was kind of evolving I was this week I've gone through three three different triages so I apologize I when I meant when I sent what I sent to the city initially I said I'm still looking through a bunch of these candidates so some of these names may get changed so that may have been your confusion commissioner my apologies on that okay Mar town oh this was the Iowa y from Iowa Iowa and stuff and the dtas okay are there any others that we need him to bring back up name Paul d y dial I thought he was kind of yep let me U let me escape this and get here he's from Lake City yeah his name was Paul I believe you said last name is D I got it I got it there we go I got it yeah me catch up to that slide commissioner okay all right um yes so um was [Music] the city manager in City of Lake City uh from 2023 to 2024 I don't have much he also oversaw the director of Utilities in that window um oh I see this let me get back into the process this candidate has a lengthy career with um with Lake City in a variety of capacities moving all the way up to the city manager director utility position and then um left in February of 2024 so um in the capacity of city manager he was overseeing police fire utilities Finance Human Resources procurement Public Works Information Technology growth management Community Development Airport customer service about 200 employees about $70 million budget and uh the position is interim city manager uh and executive director of utilities doing the work of the the city manager but obviously goinging a dual role because he was split between his previous work as the um uh utilities and uh and also serving as a public works director position so a little bit of you know public or a little bit of of capital project management type skills there some Grant work type work certainly a lot of work in the utilities and infrastructure Arena he's no longer with Lake City uh no he's indicated he is no longer with Lake City I don't have anything else on Mr dial in that regard though apologize is there any reason why he wasn't on your list um most of the positions you've seen that I've recommended they've been in the lead role as a manager for multiple periods of time five six years or Beyond um so although this would have been you know his background as a as a city manager role um is a little less than that and that was that was predominantly the reason in terms of the background a lot of utility work and I know your water and sewer is largely provided by your your county here so there's project management skill set so as I said we had a lot of people in in that applied for the position that were qualified but I wouldn't necessarily put them as high up in the risk as some of the others who have been in that lead CEO type position or in a department role very close to the city but at the end of the day these are your your candidates mine I want you to feel comfortable with who who you all select so for these ones that we all bring up to review we should rank those as well yeah I can add their names if you'd like me on that process when we go to that point I will certainly add that so um I I will put his name on the uh list for consideration are there any other names of individuals anyone else um look at Dax Norton chance may to catch up with his material okay all right so Dax brings about 20 years of experience in um Small Business Development quality of place human capital type overall functions uh he's indicated that um one point LGE team of7 oversaw a budget of about $16 million in functions and responsibilities uh presently involved as a principal owner of Crossroads Municipal management uh doing business as Crossroads man management advisers in zionville Indiana been in that role from 2019 to present looks to be a private Municipal consulting firm operations um the capacity is director of Economic Development grants and funding and Municipal strategy with Ms consultants in Indianapolis uh from 2019 to 2024 uh had functions of uh Municipal operations Economic Development Consulting programs working with underfunded and understaff communities basically serving as a staff resource to smaller communities doing Economic Development efforts served as a town manager for economic development in the town of wil Wilston uh Indiana from for six years from 2013 to 2019 um that was indicating the fifth fastest growing U Town at that point in America U managed a budget of $16 million and teame close to 97 people then was the executive director of the Indiana office of community and Rural Affairs in Indianapolis Indiana from 2013 uh working on a Statewide agency function there and then also served as an executive director of Boom County Economic Development Corporation from 2008 to 2013 so um basically uh Economic Development background program skills at State levels uh largely private sector type levels uh with one town manager position the in response to the question um so a little bit been doing consulting work that certainly related to local government been out out of the role for a period uh served that six-year stint back in 2019 been out of that that day-to-day functions responsibilities um the other components I had on this most your candidates had Masters or above uh this this particular candate had a bachelor as well so those were some of the reasons hav't determined which which uh presentation I included or not but those would have been some of the drivers there did you bring up uh Peter Janowski I at one point I was looking at that um and I was a little concerned with the number of positions that he had had in the transition so that's why did that but I'm more than glowed to bring it up but that was why one point very similar to a lot of the others yeah but if you'd like I'm I'm more than glow to bring them up if you want okay that was at the end of the day as I said I was still doing some evaluation that was a bit of concern the number of transitions uh going through um that were extensive okay um can you pull up David Harville uh that is an individual who accepted another position he was one of that had resigned I'm sorry that had he not taken the position he was going to be on my list where did he where did he go uh I do not remember I I remember him telling me about didn't stick with me I apologize my I wrote down Ashley bowo which was I think she was very early on in the yeah so I that may have been early preview bias sure I haven't looked at her I was interested let me I'll bring it up here um let me get that here and I'll bring up slide um the concern there because I was intrigued by her stat was she the Canadian she's the Canadian so that was part of the reason given that you had such a a pool of of U you know qualified candidates I was a little concerned to U bring that into the mix but let me um that up yeah I I I um she indicated in her application materials that although she she's not one of the questions to ask are you currently eligible to work in the US and she said no but then later in their material she had indicated that she um believes that she could get a Visa but could only do that after an employment offer were provided so there's a little bit of a you know tug and pull there every once in a while I run into some Canadian candidates that are dual citizenship and that you can come back and forth and do that without the case I did like her background like you uh mayor I thought that she had a good skill set I like the size of the organizations I liked her background and planning and and work U but at the end of the day I was just concerned about not having the certainty of of if ultimately she could uh come into the role and get the appropriate visas to for work purposes did she say anything about her desire to be coming to Florida or coming to the stat I do not believe in her cover letter that that she said that mayor but let me double check that I assume in Canada they have all whole different type of government structure and also they're not members of the same like icma yeah we it is international so we do have people from all over the world that are part of icma so I don't think that's the factor there U I don't see anything that necessarily drives it specifically back to um back to to Y Florida in particular um apologize I'm looking quickly through a cover letter but I'm not seeing anything that that raises that but in response to your question um but for the uncertainty I probably would have had her in your in your mix for consideration but for the uncertainty whether she can actually physically get the appropriate visas to continue if that's something you want me to explore and if ultimately she shakes out I'm more than glad to have that conversation in Greater detail but uh the number of other candidates that I knew didn't have that barrier I did not yeah there's plenty of other options look at Brian Kelly had him in the mix right yeah oh we already reviewed him yeah he was he was definitely included I'll bring up slide though yeah I think he was not on that earlier list that we received from in a word that's why I Asis his name Kevin sweet Uh Kevin is the other one that withdrew that's all I have anyone else all right so we adding Paul and Dax those the two think that's what I heard yep okay I don't need to add Ashley unless anyone else yeah depending how you want to address that what is what's NE what's the next part are you gonna that's what I'm I'm going to walk you through it here in a second can we Norton correct can we take like a five minute break certainly yeah that's F so we'll adjourn for about five minutes and we'll Rec e e e e e e e e e e e e e we're going to give them our scores now [Music] I'm in HR and I have you done or I said it's a good sign that's an attraction of your community absolutely that's what I I don't are we back okay all right welcome back everyone um we'll go ahead and get started again um could you I do it before we go into the scoring I did have one more that I found during the break could you pull up Ryan fabri on him okay okay um all right there's his Coastal experience kind of yeah and and I went back and forth mayor on on this candle as well because I I like the north mortal breach I like the coastal as you mentioned as well um so let me let me unpack it and then we'll we can talk about them in in Greater detail currently serving is the assistant city manager in the city of North Myrtle Beach in South Carolina um in that capacity is since February of 2023 so a little over a year here um handles um pending legislation impacts and coordinating local functions work with legislative delegation um handles uh Public public uh communication press releases media advisories things of that nature um working with local Partnerships um leadership development of LGE long and short range plans and um basically guidance uh with director and departments um don't get a sense the way it's structured they that that person necess has oversight of particular departments works as kind of a jack of all trades and assisting the city manager overall um prior to that worked as a project manager um with under a FEMA program with Michael Baker International a private sector group subject matter areas on flood plane management um uh Community response strategies Community engagements resilient action SE so a lot of the work on sea level rises and programs like that and then worked um for uh a few years as a Town Administrator for a relatively small community an island Community there um from 2015 to 2022 uh handling the day-to-day and about um say all's island is actually only a hundred that's what I believe that was one of the reasons that was a little concerned that you know it's pretty pretty small operation there um but prior to that was the assistant Town Administrator as well so pretty pretty small pretty small function I'm surprised they have an assistant Town Administrator okay that was it I I like the coastal work in the background as well I was just scale and scope and things of that nature was why I did not necessarily Happ in this list okay all right all right okay all right so as I mentioned at the beginning of this process uh the way this is most most marks it's an easy way to identify that score of one you're definitely interested two you might be interested in the candet three you're not interested in the candet what I find as we go through this list it'll it'll quickly get us to kind of a where you are as a as a as a board and then we can evaluate the scores and see how the num take out from there so um I've taken them in the order I presented them I have added the two additional candidates that uh the mayor had asked us to to put in the mix so we'll include them in the in the VOE process as well so um just take candate by candate if you tell me your numbers this will self- populate and do the math for us so like to start with Angela Stone uh before we do that can I ask a question about process here I know the direct I'm glad the directors are here and I I assume they've seen all the resumés and had chance to formulations and I I kind of would like to hear something from Ian you're do we have the right uh 31 people here that that we're looking at the list of from 59 or what we did was the senior folks took a look at it myself the 2 AC the uh guard director and Jen and we kind of lined up who we thought really more not to influence what you all are doing but to kind of stay apprised and AR breast of of what's happening in the process at this particular point I think it would be premature for for us to to weigh in at this in your selection process okay sufficient sufficient okay we did um there if I can follow Gary's comment as well so obviously I mentioned the list you saw was kind of a work in progress as best I could to to get it there and I know they looked at their list and combine it and uh there were a couple names that were were suggested either from the board or from the staff and we've Incorporated those into discusss as well my goal is to give you as broad of a look as possible at the end of the day these are your selections not my selections or staffs are only going to be owned by you I will tell you we get later in the presentation about what we typically do to make sure that when you get your finalist on board how we involve staff because most organizations want to have that relationship and get a feedback from staff not necessarily that they're making the decision and I will tell you most your candidates likewise want to meet your staff because they're making a decision whether this the right community so we build a process that gets that involvement and but obviously down to you know three to five or so CL thanks for that information definitely don't want to leave that as a as a gap for you because that's an important element absolutely all right Angela Stone okay um and you can give me in whatever order you want whoever wants to go first second third I can I'll go right AC make it easy for him sure make it for that in the order that he has that okay that's fine I mean to put you in the spot first and foremost sure I have a two two two two one one Brian Kelly one one two two Carrie Vargo one one two three one Anderson one I didn't um was from Great Falls Min Montana got military background I put a 1.5 so put a two for me I like couldn't make a I started right a two and then there's always one in the group right man um gotx up oh I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry my bad um go back here thanks for the editing here all right you wanted two I'll go with a two yeah two gotcha okay who great fall uh Chuck Chuck Anderson I gave him a one please one okay one one one freeze one three three Shing two three three three three Jacob Smith two SM two three three three James slon one one one one one one two three two Shoebridge three three three of go one two two three three Kathleen Murray oh that's the one I missed I knew I missed um bring a slide back up would be helpful sure you know we're deal York um two one doing that Kathleen Murray Murr three three two I'm sorry what's number three three thank you and Griffin one one three two three MCN two one two two three Mike SEC two two three three three Kaminsky one sorry three one two two Marsh one two two three three one three two three three I'll break one one two three one Rob hilard two sorry I lost my place Mr hbert Hillard Hillard yes one two one two one one one one twoy hawthor two three two two two brown one one one three one Ted Yates one three one three twoos two two I'm sorry that one's a one that's a one yes sir two three three Andre Davis two two two two three all three two two three three two two two three three it's a mystery okay got all right okay so these folks one two or below there's 14 candet there after that you jump into some higher higher numbers so um you're kind of in the zone as I said this typically gets you down to a a reasonable number at that point um so let me just kind of look and flag some things here just to raise some discussions also want to Patrick kisy Kevin Griffin so um realize that everyone will see things in different aspects that's okay in the process um what I like to do is just to highlight the fact that obviously there's some differences thoughts about these candidates and so one of the things we're about to ask these candidates to put a whole lot more skin in the game that right now they've done a cover letter a resume and answered a couple brief questions as part of the application we're about to ask them to really put some more EMP emphasis here and so I always like to ask the groups when we go through this saying even though you may have rid someone at a three at this point are you comfortable is there anything there that raises any real red flags that would prevent you from really giving serious consideration if that candidate were to then come before you as a semifinalist and potentially as a finalist now I realize you don't have all their material yet so this is once again the high level so it's really a question just to make sure that because some of the candidates may even be watching this and they're going to see their rankings they're going to say Hey you know do I have a shot at this or not so I basically like to ask you as a group are you okay realizing that some of you have them rated as a one others have a three at this point of the juncture that you're comfortable to give a fair sh can evaluate their their material as they going forward or is there anything there that is just too much of a concern for you and if so sometimes helpful to talk about that because that's the case you know you're trying to build consensus on a board obviously but always like to raise that as just a question mark if you're your okay proceeding based on what you see here well I think we've got uh how how many names there you said 13 or or 13 or there's there should if you took if you did everybody under a 20 started at the 1.8 that would get rid of most of the threes that we got there uh and then you'd leave us with a list of uh then what 11 11 or so people so fin list yes um here here would be my suggestion if you're comfortable with this uh this is your process but let me give you some insight it is not uncommon to lose a few Folks at this stage of the game they they may be involved I I don't know if there are another searches I will know that going further I know a couple of these I'm certainly aware because I've seen their applications elsewhere but um some of these folks may very well drop out and so I I'm okay with the size of the number you've got now if you're okay with it because you're likely lose you know one or two or three of these folks anyways and if you get down to 10 all of a sudden you're down to seven or something like that you can really back yourself into a corner and then all of a sudden you really are are hamstrung at that decision so as I say right now it's it's harder to say it's probably easier to say I'm willing to give a fair shake to all these folks because I don't know enough about them but I'm going to know more at the next level the next level you'll make that distinction of saying now I've seen the detail yes or no I'm really not ready to go there and we'll go through this type of process with your your semifinal your semi-finalist to get to your finalist and that's where it really becomes critical because now you're about to ask them to for an interview and they want to make sure if I'm coming in I want to make sure I'm I'm on board that I can be fairly considered so my commissioner my recommendation was I I get where you're coming from but I would be concerned about taking that many off because you might end up being in a hole pretty quickly well and I'd also like to I mean there's not that many there so I think it might be worth each person if you ranked it a three pretty strongly feel about that so I didn't have I don't have any reasoning for why you did that major that didn't jump out to me that might have been concerning had one three in the group and I the notes I had written uh under that person was that too much movement from job to job no city manager experience were the notes that I had written along there for uh Ken Griffin so nothing horrible or anything just just a lot of not a history of keeping the same job for long periods of time time would it be fair to do that exercise like for each absolutely if you want to take that so how about we just well I know we started there why don't we just take it in the order coming down list yeah James Slayton as commissioner Toth you had him right at a three yes a second I not reason for that oh we really have to go through and say why we're blacking somebody out my well process at the end I if you don't have to I just for my curiosity gu I'm just more negative than most well and like like he said Doug said they may be watching so if it's not something you're comfortable saying that's perfectly fine I just like to hear multiple perspectives I mean this is a serious decision we're making my concern with him is his issue with the police it's not very sorry my concern is the issue that he's having currently with the police department or within re within the last couple there was some there was an issue there about leaving and not leaving I'm aware of that our media watch that as it sounds like it's been resolved largely but I understand the nature of what you're raising commissioner yes was my concern with that and we have a great police force and I really don't want to see you know any issue and then who the other one I gave we're gonna so Taylor Brown that was commissioner doctor anything to add okay um Carrie Vargo doctor do you want to say anything about any of them for part it was the time they had in the current job that was equ to this job was part of it and then how they move and there were a lot that moved every year or two years three years all right um then I'll to Patrick kiski um to do with the suspension res resignation and all that have concerns with it flag I I and and one of to that as I said some of these candidates are going to have some of that i' I've got some background on him as far as some community support and what the business and the other communities have so there'll be another side of the story and that that's the nature of the approach that was the only two yep understood on thank you m door I know it tends to be a it's an older community I think I know a few of the Commissioners from their city um like an older School line of thinking would you say that he's has like a fresh perspective a yes Progressive if if you saw the material if you get CH delve in he included in his background material about some of the initiatives and challenges and issues he dealt with during his window of time there threw a initially got a very strong review and then as they were dealing with a variety of the capital projects and some internal challenges with some um employment concerns internal to the organization that's when things happened but the big issue was the transition on um with this this board as I recall specifically the mayor snagged um but I I have seen and I've spoken to him and I've also seen a variety of material um coming out of that process um a lot of community support and what he was trying to accomplish in the midst of that so I think there'll be another side of the story too commissioner dicki already spoke to canning anything D dicki spoke to him earlier but anything to add no I just have uh he's got good Public Works and utility experience good engineer but not much man management yeah his his probably largest function was the position at Hillsboro County when he did infrastructure programs okay lawence I do know his attraction is to get back to Florida and ultimately wants to stay here as I said he's kept his property here Tred to recruit him for another position for a very comparable title position another position but it was in the other side of the state so he decided he didn't want to take that one okay Lawrence MCN anything to add commissioner minning uh Lawrence I have um good education not much experience and Ted Yates commissioner Toof Ted was the previous manager of Isa marada and then was the mayor up in Twinsburg Ohio correct he was um pretty much an ele at a non-renewal with Isa marada very short term um and there's more there's more to the story than what you might see in in there as well there's in fact this week we're probably going to see some more information about some reporting that's being challenged about some of the stuff stay tuned about that he's challenging or they are no the um the development no development type debate taking place there uh he was trying to bridge the gap there's a lot of community support during that process they've gone through a couple managers and their another Community has gone through a variety of managers there um group that was kind of opposed to him has um raised some issues of concern and now being challenged by him um and counter there's another story coming out if you follow some of the re literally anytime this week or by Monday there's going to be a counter story different what's reported is so there's there's as I say it's a it's a pointed time we realize many of these candid have stories that are in play um I think he's a strong candidate he also will probably be a little more expensive than some of your other candidates but we'll ask them we always have that conversation with the candidates as part of the effort in terms of its expertise is land use experience an attorney and um um so his compensations desired to be a little bit higher than others but that's all part of the negotiation process I've had a series of conversations with them in a couple searches of recent so I probably know a little bit more than what's out there publicly now but I know there's more coming probably that I think might cast a different set of circumstances okay um so back to Doug's original question was for those of you who did put threes for these is there anyone that you feel like very strongly about that you would really want them to continue that you wouldn't be interested in hearing more from no I just put the threes because of the reasoning behind the research I did on the resumes and that's it okay okay good if you're okay if you're com that's that's that's un that size of the list um Let me let me ship back to the PowerPoint here and talk a little bit about kind what's next so um what we'll do is we will I will reach out and talk to all these SC notify them that they've been selected as a semi-finalist in position we normally give them about 24 to 48 hours to confirm their continued interest in the position so I'll know pretty quickly whether they're in or out so to speak um our process will involve a fairly detailed list of questions we call a a pre-interview questionnaire it'll be about their background their skill set why they left their previous positions uh if they were in any short-term positions what drove them to that issue so we're going to learn more about those transitions that we've talked about whether they're promotional opportunities or whatever that looked and felt like make sure your microphone's Clos I can hear um so we're going to ask them about their transitions in different positions we're going to be asking about much more of their management style we're going to be focusing on a number of the items that we rais Capital project management resiliency issues things that were in your brochure that are very unique to your community uh strategic planning Performance Management things like that succession planning so we're going to want to get a sense of their background and how they their experience and their training would help them address those issues so you can get a better feel for whether they've got a lot to to bring to the table those items are not necessarily as much and and they all have different responses to those issues um we're going to get into their relationships and Community engagement processes how they work with you as elected officials how they work with their staff their their their kind of overall management philosophies as well as I mentioned earlier we're going to ask them to to tell us anything in their background that as a future employer is likely to raise a question or concern or a controversy so you're going to have them explain in their own words kind of those circumstances um and we're also going to ask them uh General compensation and benefit package issues that they would like if they were only selected for discussion for purposes of negotiation um we will certainly also ask them if there's any challenges or concerns that if they were offered the position that might be a factor of concern for you um relocation housing things like that timing of acceptance of a position it may have kids in school things of those nature that may come into play um we also ask how quickly they could start if they were ultimately appointed we'll know when the interview dates are going to be and we'll go through there so we're going to get a lot of that type of background material with them um then as I mentioned we'll do um in addition to those candidates providing background information I'm going to be um we'll initiate what's called a stage one media search a Lexus Nexus database search so we'll start to get some media coverage beyond the basic Googling that I've done at this stage of the game um and we will ask them to participate in typically four pre-recorded questions about why they're interested in the position some of their most complex projects things that maybe aren't in the resume that they would like to share that we'd like to know about them as a person things like that those are re timed and recorded So you'll get a chance to see how they communicate and and communicate their information in a visual fashion um we give the candidates a chance to do that work we bundle that all material up we shoot that all to you and then you've got some homework to do at that point you'll be able to review their covered letters questionnaires resumés video interviews um I will be doing the same I talking to all these candidates in much greater detail at that point unpacking things as you're recruited questions that I might have on them as well and then we'll be back meeting with you to review that and I joke it's a lot like being on Survivor um you're going to be voted on or off the island at that point and there're going to be a couple you all love and a couple you don't love and we spend a lot of time with the folks in the middle to try to help you get to a process of three to five folks that you'd like to bring on um so that's the next thing that will happen then we'll release all the other folks that are not progressing in the search and that's May 15th at 6: PM correct uh yes I can go to the next slide here if need I'll come back to that yes the um read on my screen but uh yes we're scheduled on May 15th or 16th I I can't see it from here mayor 15 15 um and that'll be an opportunity so from the time we'll let the candidates complete that work we'll bundle it up we'll get it to you you have some time to review it that'll be your homework then we'll be back doing this type of session again and we'll basically have a conversation about these candet and then rank these candet your goal trying to get close to three to five folks okay so we'll have from May until May 15th to review all of that yes we or probably May 3rd uh either May 2nd or May 3rd we anticipate getting that to you I always have a slip date in the there because inevitably somebody runs into technology problem or there's an issue and you know we'll we'll package what we got so that you get plenty of time but you get some time to deal with that so you get a better part of two weeks there to to work through it um I want to go back to the previous slide just to give you a sense so I just want you to be thinking about what we're going to be doing with your finalist um I don't need decisions but react to it those folks we will do once you've determined your finalist we will do background reference criminal history credit um and a and a full-blown stage two media search where they worked as adult web people that check all the search engines all the papers all the media all the Social Media stuff and we'll prepare that as a a material for you we know that that will be a factor of consideration we typically ask our finalists to also do an additional exercise or potentially two exercises one is called the first year game plan and it's a written exercise so if they're app point as your next manager how are they going to approach the job what are the things they're going to do in their first 30 days 60 days 90 days 180 days and kind of the balance of that first year and you may think everybody will do that the same I've seen thousands of them it gives you some normative insights about just how people get their head around what they're about to step into and that'll give you some additional insights about their their their exposure and their background um many times are we have an optional service if you're interested in a personality a dis assessment many people are familiar with that we off and do those and you can you'll see each candidate and you'll see them as a group so you'll be able to compare kind of how they look and that's informative when you're interviewing and that's an optional service if You' like I would love to see that okay okay um and then typically for our city manager positions the nature of this position requires a lot of public presentations and so we often normally ask them to do uh a presentation like a TED talk no more than 10 minutes it's meant to be short uh it can be about their first year game plan it can be about challenges and opport you can be about whatever topic we just need to figure out what that wants to be and we normally have that as part of the process for your interview with you as a public body because your manager is going to make a lot of these presentations and I'm interested and you're probably interested in how concise how tight how do they make a presentation how do they relate to information and relate to you and relate to an audience and so we often incorporate that that's an optional service we can figure out what that looks and feels like but you might want to give some thought about that as well um and so work is continues even after they're done with semi-finalist they've got some more work to go through to get ready for this position um the on-site interview process that we've been discussing with Jessica and your team most of ours are two-day processes and I think those are the dates that we've landed here with all your schedules as well so the first one is June 19th and the second is June 20th we typically want to have the community uh the the candidates get out and be get tours of your community just as I did to see your projects and your initiatives and what this place all looks like and what the EB and Flow feels like um and we as I mentioned earlier we always invite your your candidates going to meet your staff your staff's going to meet your candidates so we'll help facilitate a session where they'll have a group meeting that'll feel a little like a staff meeting but a little bit like an interview and I'll help them prepare questions and I'll watch how the candidates are relating to your staff and how your staff's relating to the candidates and be able to kind of capture that information in Florida because of the nature of this process um 99.9% of our searches Commissioners like to do 101s so we'll have a session where you'll do a round robin with each of the candidates and we'll just play musical chairs and work your way through that process if you get a chance to have those questions individually and then normally and I think we've scheduled here as well what we call public meet and greet um normally what what happens you schedule this in a community center or a room that can accommodate a crowd uh we encourage you to invite the public and invite your stakeholders invite your boards and Commissioners whoever whoever you feel is appropriate that's going to want to interface with your manager candidates the mayor normally opens that up welcomes people turns it over to me I'll talk about how we got to this point we'll work with your staff to develop a bio with sheets and pictures and all that and then we encourage them to all just take a part of the room and your crowd will work around the room and we like you as elected officials to be there because you'll get feedback from your constituents about their thoughts and opinions about the candidates as a it's the one part of the process I can't control because I have no idea who's going to show up but I'm actually from a candidate standpoint it's helpful because they these are the people going to interact with and I want to see how they relate to your constituents and how your constituents are relating to them and you know kind of how their presence are in that um the second day is a big day we try to pack all that kind of information together on day one so that the second day you can be focused for a series of of a board meeting interview or public meetings with your candet most of the time those sessions go for a scheduled 90 minutes that gives you about 60 minutes for a traditional interview if you do a PowerPoint about 10 minutes for that and it gives you enough time for some Q&A in between uh every Community I work with um when they said I don't want to do 90 minutes when you do 60 Minutes they always run to 90 minutes I just tell you it's just it's this is an important decision it's most important decision you make as a as a body and most of the time you're going to want a little more time with these folks even though you've kind of seen them but it'll give you a sense of that um so that's 90 minutes over the course of the day and if you got five candl lets that'll that'll run you through the day and uh if you're not physically or emotionally taxed at that point uh we often will have a chance to deliberate some communities like to say hey it's been a long two days I just need time to process and they want to come back the next morning or a day later or some other time during that but we do try to get you to a conclusion as quickly as possible because um many of these candidates may be in other searches and if you delay too long you may find that in their Community is hard than to go that so we do try to get you to a decision making we'll have all your decisions and ready references background all that work will be done so you'll be in a position if you're ready to to uh engage in a conversation on deliberations of offer you'll have the information to start and we're here to help you through that process we'll negotiate with you on your behalf however you want and then have it memorialized with your attorney I don't need decisions on all those items but I just want you to be thinking about what's coming next because the next meeting I'm going to try to drill down and make sure we got those things uh in place that make sense yeah would it be possible to do the disk assessments for the all the semifinalists uh you can there's a cost with it it's like 150 bucks so that's why we normally wait till you get to your finalist on that area um once again it's kind of like that triage that I mentioned mayor about your you want to spend your time and energy on the folks that you're timly going to be most deeply concerned about so uh I don't think I've ever seen it done at the semi-finalist level but the finalist certainly many Rec I use that very we heavily used dis in my professional work so I find it valuable but I understand that's a a big cost so I'm good with waiting okay I have a question how does the Fe get back to the commission sure great question um so as I I sit down in those sessions I'm watching them and then I will ask them to unpack at a very high level um basically three questions one what did you see in their background your interactions with them and your interview with them that resonated with you and we'll just kind of capture all that thought at a high level um the second question is what did you see in their background their interactions that raise questions or concerns that might require some additional Insight or review the third is based on your interactions and the response to questions was there anything that you feel that might be a question that requires a little more insight um that perhaps you as elected officials during your second day might want to ask about and that may be different from one candidate to another based on the way they respond to a question or something like that um don't I I'll I'll debrief with your staff and I'll put that at a very high level I won't say who said what where and how because this is your decision but they you know they clearly you want the candidate to click with you you want them to click with your community you want them to click with your staff and so that's part of the staff component and I'll provide that at a high level and have that available for you before you're sitting down in your second day after the day one I'll be able to capture all those notes same sort of thing I'm watching the candidates throughout the whole process including the meet and greets and things of that nature and getting it just saying how they relate and react to so I'll add any other insights as your recruiter and adviser in this that might be helpful capture those in the notes but the goal is to have all that done after day one you'll have that before your formal sessions on day two so that you'll be able to maybe unpack things differently with different candal based on that thank you so a little it's Nuance but preparing it the evening of June 19th I assume after our or during our one on ones and the public or you'll be there for the public meet and greet so just logistically like when would we have that and are we going to if we don't have time to review it ahead of time will that be something through with us in the meeting a little both on that mayor um depending on when we get out of there and how exhausted we all are I typically work that late that night pretty late capturing all those thoughts in a in a point um sometimes I can email those but those might be hitting you late as well so normally what will happen if I if I get it done early enough I get it out I get an email to everybody if not I will definitely have available C copies and we can talk through that the first part of the meeting uh on that second day is getting you prepared for the interviews so there will be some things that you'll get in preparation you'll have all that material ahead of you and I'll have proposed sample questions and things of that nature to get you through the interview but there'll be an opportunity for you to also help prioritize those questions and potentially add other questions so for that first kind of 45 minutes or so in the morning before you start your first interview is us to kind of go through all that including any of the feedback okay it's a busy couple days so day one or day two is like an all day meeting in here that yeah uh yes yeah um you'll you I said the good news is You' got outstanding if you need a break you can look outside enjoy the enjoy the scenery but yes day two is a long day especially if you get five interviews as and day one are we involved in the community tours or argue is we do it differently what time would we be looking at so typically U many times I try to you know and I think in working with your HR Director uh most of the time we do our our one-on ones in the morning and then we get the Commissioners in in the morning and then they're done and then sometimes there's a break for lunch and they may be able to mingle with the candidus as well as part of that um and then you're not need it again until the evening before your meet and greet that takes place I think the way they've discussed it here with some feedback that maybe you're trying to do the one-on ones right before you do the meat greet so um I think that's where we're leading but we're going to kind of fine-tune that schedule uh talk talking with Jessica okay so uh at that point then you're free in the morning uh basically it would just be towards the afternoon during the round robin of the one1 and then you'll be expected probably to okay and is the community tour something they go on like will we put them on the City by all together and someone's leading one person's leading the tour small groups what we'll do is break them up we've got a couple of senior staff designated depending upon how many candidates usually we tried to pair two department heads per candidate and they'll take them around give them a tour of the city talk about all the facilities talk about what's happening and and also uh provide an opportunity for the candidates to ask them questions about the organization and those kind of things and then it it's really more of an orientation for them candidates an opportunity we'll also get feed staff MERS on indidual okay and if you have capacity to do it individually we prefer it that way um I will tell you both as a candidate but also as a recruiter when you're put on a bus and you got four other candidates H you know the level of dialogue and conversation is the same as if you're getting some detailed individuals and we sit down and talk with those tour guides about reactions that they may have as well so it's another part of that our goal is to really just do a 360 evaluation of these folks while they're on site we try to put all that stuff on day one because you're likely to talk about a project or an issue if they haven't seen it they may not fully comprehend it so that's why we try to pack that all into the first day okay and that's all I have for you I know it's been a little longer process but hopefully uh you've been able to get a flavor of what this looks and feels like I know as I said this the most important decision you do as elected officials is is hiring your manager so we want to make sure you're comfortable that you know your candidates and and we certainly are pleased to continue this process as we go into the next step as your continue their work all right well thank you very much um sorry I already close my all right well that concludes our than you all for everyone who's watching at home I know our our residents are very engaged in this process and we we invite you to continue to be engaged please send us any feedback that you may have you're welcome to email your Mayors and commission mayor and Commissioners um to let us know what you think we're curious to hear um with that said we'll adjourn oh just have one more question sorry about that because I want to get out of here too but will uh residents have an opportunity to review the resumés or not they're in the meeting packet public record and different uh different to your point commissioner sometimes uh different organizations do it differently especially with the finalist sometimes they put all that stuff together others don't do it it's it's really your call we'll help you facilitate whatever you need to to accommodate your desires here yeah if we I think it would be good if we could have a the packet narrow it down to just these candidates and have that posted on our city manager search page the the cover letters and resumés of just those um that would be great that was well we' like as soon as possible too many once you guys got it narrowed down to uh to the semifinalist than we thought it would be appropriate to post so here's here's what I would suggest you doing this um I probably obviously it' be late tonight by the time I get back but um I'll be notifying these candidates probably by tomorrow I normally give them 48 hours to look at their email respond that they're in but by first part of next week I would have you know all all 14 are in or you know if somebody drops out or something like that I'll just coordinate with whoever's left at that window but I'll I'll certainly make sure if we lose some candidates you're aware of who they might be can certainly get that if Monday works out for you I think that'll be fine and can we get a copy of this as well certainly yep yep I do that this as well as the schedules or whatever whatever you need mayor just coordinate I'll I'll coordinate with your staff absolutely and do you communicate to the people that weren't part of the the sem finalist so what I I I always you know we send I want to catch everybody as soon as possible um and um let them know where they stand um many times they'll want to any thoughts and Impressions and I try to do that as best as their time and my time will allow that as well but yeah we'll take care of managing all the all the both that are proceeding and not all right anything else all right we're adjourned thank you thank you