Before they can actually start the job of recruiting a new city manager, the city council of Boulder City has to recruit a recruitment firm.
That is not actually a hard requirement. The city has a Human Resources staff that recruits for open positions every single day. It is a big part of their job.
But at previous meetings discussing the idea of hiring an outside firm, some council members expressed that it might not be a good idea to have city staff hiring their own boss.
Actually, again, that is not the actual reality. In reality, whether the recruitment is done in house or by a third-party firm, the council itself will make the ultimate hiring decision. For those unclear on the structure of city governments in Nevada, staff is hired by and works for the city manager. The city manager is hired by the city council and the manager works for the council. Some interpretations of the law say that it may be illegal for a council member to even have a discussion with a city department head about policy without having the city manager present.
To bring things up to speed for those following along at home, former City Manager Taylour Tedder departed the job after about two and a half years back in May. He opted to take a position offered to him in a city in Delaware —a smaller city, but with a much larger pay package. Before leaving, he set in motion a process for the council to consider hiring an outside recruitment firm to suggest candidates to fill the role he was departing.
Interestingly, one of the firms suggested —and the only one to opt to make a presentation to the council in their June 10 meeting, Raftelis, had been the same firm who had recruited Tedder away from Boulder City and off to Delaware. Raftelis did not get the job.
The council voted at that June meeting to direct staff to continue looking for a firm. There was a specific request, championed by council member Steve Walton, to focus on firms that did more than just recruit and that could provide skill-based assessments and emotional intelligence testing.
According to the staff report, 24 firms were contacted, 10 replied and staff was directed to get a presentation for the council by just one firm, Oregon-based WBCP. This week, the council heard a long presentation (more than an hour) by Wendi Brown, who laid out the qualifications of her firm. Notably, one of the first things Brown said was that, if hired, it would be the first time WBCP had worked with a city in Nevada.
Addressing what some on the council had identified as a sore spot in the Tedder experience, Brown noted that “there has been some question about if we would poach a candidate after their initial two-year employment period was up. I can’t guarantee that a recruit would not apply for another recruitment, but I can guarantee that we would not poach them. We are not gonna specifically say, ‘Hey would you like to apply for this other position’ after their two-year period was up.”
Councilmember Cokie Booth expressed some possible 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.
Brown replied that the search would be national but that her firm would start close to home and work out from there in their search for qualified people.
The preference for someone who knows the area was something of a theme. Mayor Joe Hardy specifically pointed to the state’s open meeting law (one of the strictest in the nation) and expressed a preference for someone who already understands its ramifications.
“We depend on our city manager to make sure we don’t go to jail,” he quipped.
Councilmember Steve Walton put forth the idea that he would prefer someone with at least a master’s degree. But he also said that qualification should be flexible so as not to exclude someone who appeared to be the perfect candidate.
The one factor that kept coming up was longevity.
The council decided unanimously to hire WBCP. The actual cost was not specified in the council’s vote, but the staff report said that the approximate cost would be in the neighborhood of $30,000.