In a special meeting last week, the city council voted unanimously to extend a conditional offer of employment to one of three candidates brought forward by a headhunter contracted to find a replacement for former city manager Taylour Tedder, who resigned unexpectedly early this year after just two and a half years on the job.
The offer at a proposed salary of $200,000 per year plus an unspecified amount to account for moving expenses was made to Ned Thomas, who is currently the city manager in Milpitas, Calif. as multiple council members said they would be comfortable working with Christopher Jordan were Thomas to turn down the offer. Thomas’ biggest advantage, as stated by multiple council members, was that he has ties to the region and owns a home in Henderson.
A third candidate, Tarik Rahmani, who is currently the deputy city manager in Carson, Calif., was unable to attend the public interview citing a health emergency according to Wendi Brown of recruitment firm WBCP, who oversaw the process and the meeting.
Brown noted that her firm’s efforts netted more than 100 applicants.
“After doing a national search, we came up with 106 applicants,” she said. “We screened those candidates based on paper initially and then did Zoom or phone screens with most of those candidates. Once 20 potential candidates had been identified, they were presented to a panel that was agreed to in a previous council meeting and, of those, three were recommended to move forward.
After Jordan spoke, the council had a lengthy talk that was less about the who than it was about the “how much.” When he left town for a much higher paying job in Delaware, Tedder was making $192,656, which is toward the upper end of the advertised salary range of $211,504. Several on the council agreed that figure may be low considering current housing costs in BC. Booth suggested a higher figure but City Attorney Brittany Walker said that was a problem for this meeting as a higher figure had not been agendized.
None of this means that Boulder City actually has a new city manager. At least not yet. The offer is conditional and the city needs to do background and reference checks. Plus, there is a definite possibility that there may be some negotiation taking place over salary and benefits. Council members noted that, coming from California, it is assumed that Thomas would be taking a significant pay cut in the range of $60,000-70,000 per year.
The most telling question
While Thomas and his Southern Nevada experience came out on top, it was actually Jordan who was behind the most revealing part of the nearly four-hour meeting. After answering a series of questions (the same for both candidates) that were formulated by WBCP, Jordan asked the most interesting question. “Everyone always asks about what people think are the biggest challenges facing a city. I would like to turn that around and ask each of you what you think are the biggest opportunities. The answers neatly summed up the divisions in the community about the best path forward.
Councilwoman Sherri Jorgensen: “We’re a small community and we like it, but I would like to not see us get smaller and smaller to the point where we’re Route 66. So, ideally, I would love to see the opportunity for us to somehow attract more young families to come back here.”
(As noted in previous reporting, Boulder City has twice the state average of residents over the age of 65 and just half the average of residents under the age of 18.)
Councilwoman Cokie Booth: “My vision for the future would be to see tourism expanded upon so that the small businesses can grow and we can see more thriving businesses downtown.”
Councilman Matt Fox: “I am right there with Cokie. You know, help open the eyes of some of the community on rethinking short-term rentals and possible legalization of OHVs (off-highway vehicles) to bring in outside money. Because we don’t want to grow and build houses but we need to grow economically.”
(Fox, who will be replaced in January with newly-elected member Denise Ashurst, spearheaded an ultimately unsuccessful push to allow limited use of OHVs on city streets and was the only member of the council to vote against a plan that resulted in the official banning of short-term rentals in the city.)
Mayor Joe Hardy: “Some of us don’t want to change anything. We want people to come and visit. We don’t necessarily want them to stay.”
Councilman Steve Walton: “We need to be small town but not small-minded. So we need to have a vision and anticipate and recognize the signs of how the world is changing even though we like our world how it is. We can’t ignore what’s going on around us. So a lot of the factors that have been brought up will help us to be visionary and to drive our economy so that we’re vibrant, yet historic.”
‘I’ve lived here for 20 years’
Thomas started off the questioning portion after Hardy asked him to tell the council about his background and why he wants the gig.
After talking about the tour of the city that the candidates got from former Parks and Recreation Director Roger Hall, Thomas answered, “I have owned a home here in Southern Nevada for 20 years. First in North Las Vegas and then more recently in Henderson. My four children have all attended Foothill High School just over the hill and my youngest daughter is a now a senior at Foothill. My wife is also this year a full-time Spanish teacher at Foothill High School.”
Thomas noted that his current work situation is unusual with him working full time in Milpitas, a smallish town in the Bay Area of California, while living in Henderson and commuting home on the weekends.
“Again, we’ve owned a home here in Southern Nevada for 20 years but several years ago, for a variety of reasons, we had made the decision to move to the Bay Area,” he said. “I had an opportunity to work over there. It was during the recession so our mortgage was underwater and we we chose not to walk away from that. We rented our home and we moved over there because our we thought there would be more educational opportunities for our children in that area and we, just like many people, we thought, ‘Well maybe the the grass is greener over on the other side.’”
Thomas said that he was originally hired as the planning director in Milpitas, a town of 81,000 residents with its own police and fire department and their own utility services. It is more than five times the size of Boulder City in terms of population with a budget of about $250 million or more than double BC’s.
“I’ve worked for the city of Milpitas for six and a half years,” Thomas reported. “I was originally hired as the planning director there and then last year, the city manager at the time, the council chose not to extend his contract and when the contract expired, they asked me as the planning director to move into the city manager’s position.”
Before the Milpitas move, Thomas worked in various planning positions for the cities of North Las Vegas and Henderson. “I, again, have more than 25 years of experience in local government and public administration and 10 of those years were here in Southern Nevada,” he said.
Thomas has a master’s degree in urban planning from Harvard but, smartly given the council’s strongly worded previous preferences for someone tied to the region kept coming back to the, “I’ve owned a home in Southern Nevada for 20 years” theme.
As residency in Boulder City is a charter requirement for city managers, Thomas would need to relocate from Henderson if he accepts the job offer.
“Boulder City is a hidden gem,” he told the council. “Maybe not hidden to you because you live here, but for those who are on the outside… I have been pleasantly surprised. I thought I knew Boulder City well. We come over the hill to the Fourth of July. You know, breakfast and the parade and the fireworks but it’s so much more than that.”