FORKS — Interviews of six finalists for the Forks police chief job will be held in mid-November.
The interviews with the City Council and with the Civil Service Commission will be at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 15, in City Council Chambers, 500 E. Division St., Mayor Bryon Monohon said.
Those interviews will be open to the public, but the public will not be able to ask questions until the following day, Tuesday, Nov. 16, during meetings with the candidates.
The public forum will begin at 7 p.m. at Forks High School, 411 S. Spartan Ave.
Monohon said he hopes the town turns out for the public interviews.
“It really needs to be something that the public participates in,” he said Wednesday.
“Every one of the candidates we’ve selected because they have a particular talent or skill that people have told me the town needs.”
After the public interviews, the mayor plans to have paper ballots distributed so that people can vote for the candidates they prefer.
“We will give people a chance to vote at the end of the interviews for which candidates they like,” Monohon said.
“That will definitely weigh into the consideration.”
Monohon hopes to have a choice made by the end of November or the early part of December, with a new chief installed by the early part of 2011.
The finalists for the position are:
• Scott Bennett, retired sergeant for the Rockwood Police Department, Rockwood, Mich.
• Acting Chief Lloyd Lee of the Forks Police Department.
• Sgt. Richard Mann, Spring Hill Police Department, Spring Hill, Kan.
• Trooper James Paine, Utah Highway Patrol, Kaysville, Utah.
• Deputy Rick Pitt, Grant County Sheriff’s Office, Moses Lake.
• Doug Price, retired State Patrol detective sergeant, Port Angeles.
The six men were selected out of a pool of 13 applicants.
Monohon said that even though not all of the finalists are from the area, they all have a reason to want to live here.
When he took office at the beginning of the year, Monohon fired Police Chief Mike Powell to bring “new leadership to the Forks Police Department.”
Lee has filled the position since.
The salary range for the new police chief is $51,000 to $72,000.
The salary for Powell, who had been chief for 10 years, had reached $77,000.
