3 to vie for city manager position

The process for choosing a permanent (hopefully, given recent history) city manager is about to take a big step forward as the city council will get a chance to publicly question three candidates in a special meeting on Thursday, Nov. 21.

There will be a public meet and greet with the three hopefuls between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. in the Council Chamber at City Hall. The special meeting in which the council will conduct public interviews begins at 1 p.m. Those unable to attend in person can watch a livestream of the meeting at www.bcnv.org/streaming. A packet for the meeting, including resumes for each candidate will be posted on the city’s website. Per Nevada law, the packet has to be posted at least three days before the meeting.

The California candidates

If there is one thing everyone in Southern Nevada has in common it is an opinion on the pros or cons of the huge influx of new arrivals to the region from California.

Opinions may vary, but just about everyone has one. That migration has affected Boulder City, especially as the pandemic of 2020-2022 drove an influx of new residents from the Golden State who are mostly known for driving up local housing prices.

And the migration appears poised to hit city government as the city council gets ready to interview three city manager candidates brought forth by the recruitment firm they hired in August. All of the candidates are currently working in California.

Full bio information was not available as this issue went to press, but online searches did offer some basics.

Tarik Rahmani

Currently deputy city manager in Carson, Calif. and has a background in finance and economics and serves as the president of finance at the League of California Cities in addition to his deputy city manager role. Carson is a suburb of Los Angeles in the South Bay area bordered by Long Beach and Compton. It has a population of about 95,000.

Ned Thomas

Currently the city manager in Milipitas, Calif. and has a background in urban planning and design, including a master’s degree from Harvard and work as a Fulbright Scholar studying regional planning in Fukuoka, Japan. He started as planning director in Milipitas in 2018.

Christopher Jordan

Currently the city manager in South Pasadena, Calif. and was city manager in West Linn, Ore. between 2005 and 2015 when he left after reported conflicts with the council and a settlement of $140,000. He was city manager in Los Altos, Calif., until 2021 when he signed a four-year contract with the city of South Pasadena, according to the news site West Linn Tidings.

The fact that all three hail from outside of the Silver State would seem to cut against the publicly-stated preferences of the council. After former city manager Taylour Tedder left for a job of the same title in Rehobath Beach, Del. after just over two years on the job in Boulder City (and after two other short-term managers for a total of six managers and acting managers over just 12 years), the council considered a “desperate times call for desperate actions” approach of declaring a critical labor shortage. This enables them to bypass Nevada law that says a retired public sector worker collecting a PERS (Public Employees Retirement System) pension cannot take another job that is connected to the PERS system without losing their current pension payments.

Originally envisioned as a way to get retired educators back into classrooms amidst a serious shortage of teachers, a critical labor shortage declaration would allow a PERS-receiving retiree to take the city manager job and not lose their current pension payments, a practice Mayor Joe Hardy described as “double dipping.” (Note that this is not uncommon in Boulder City, as several heads of departments in the city came here after retiring from public sector jobs in other states. But the Nevada law only says such employees can’t double dip from a Nevada pension. There is no such limitation on out-of-state pensions.)

Back in August, it appeared that the council was divided 3-2 in favor of making that declaration, which only required the council to make a “finding” that a shortage existed, not to back it up with any data. However, when it came time to make said finding, Councilman Steve Walton, who had originally championed the idea, changed his vote, citing a lack of unanimity among council members.

But when the council was debating hiring recruitment firm WBCP, multiple members of the council told the firm’s Wendi Brown that they had a strong preference for a candidate with ties to Nevada.

In fact, Councilwoman Cokie Booth expressed some discomfort with the idea that the firm had not worked in Nevada, asking if WBCP would emphasize candidates who already live in the state.

“I kinda feel that if we have someone from Nevada that has worked here, has family here, grandchildren here, that they might be more inclined to stay on the job longer,” Booth said.