SEQUIM — Sequim’s city manager just got a raise, though he or she is yet to be hired.
“We set the salary range at $100,000 to $130,000,” Mayor Laura Dubois said Tuesday morning after the Sequim City Council met in an executive session late Monday night.
The search for the Sequim manager got under way in May, with Tom Waldron of Waldron & Co., the Seattle search firm hired by the City Council, predicting that finalists will come to town in mid-August for interviews, enabling the council to bring a new boss on board by fall.
Interim city manager Linda Herzog had said the position’s annual pay would be up to $115,000.
During its meeting Monday night, the council decided that “in order to attract the kind of manager we want, we should raise [the salary],” said member Bill Huizinga. “So I just did,” and the rest of the council concurred.
The manager’s pay will depend of course on education and experience, he added.
Sequim’s top official could make more than David Timmons, manager of the larger city of Port Townsend, who earns $122,372, but less than Port Angeles City Manager Kent Myers, whose salary is $150,000 a year.
Herzog, though praised by the council for her work as interim chief, has said she’s not interested in staying in Sequim after her nine-month contract ends in early September.
Sequim has been without a permanent manager since the council fired Bill Elliott on May 5, 2008.
Sequim Speaks
In other action Monday, the City Council voted 5-1, with Paul McHugh dissenting, to shrink the required number of people on Sequim Speaks, a new citizens’ advisory panel.
The committee, designed to serve as a two-way conduit of communication between Sequim area residents and the City Council, will have 12 to 19 voting members and three non-voting government liaisons, the council decided.
The liaisons, once appointed by their governments, will represent Clallam County, the city of Sequim and the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe.
When the council members authorized the panel last year, they planned for 15 to 22 members, with a required majority of people who live inside the city limit.
But most of the applications are from people who live in unincorporated Clallam County, with too few from inside Sequim.
McHugh, an opponent of Sequim Speaks since council member Ken Hays first advanced the idea in early 2008, suspects the committee will be “a whole new level of bureaucracy” between the people and local government.
After voting against reducing the number of voting members, McHugh agreed with the rest of the council on two other points.
The vote was unanimous to appoint City Attorney Craig Ritchie as the city’s Sequim Speaks liaison, and it was unanimous again to authorize $1,900 worth of city staff time to organize the panel during what’s left of 2009.
“This is only setting up Sequim Speaks,” Dubois added. “We cannot move forward until we have the proper number of applicants.”
For information about applying for a seat on the panel, visit Sequim City Hall at 152 W. Cedar St., phone 360-683-4139 or see the city’s Web site, www.ci.Sequim.wa.us.
A Sequim Speaks fact sheet and application form are available on the site under News and Notices.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
