SEQUIM — The hunt is on again for someone to run Sequim.
It’s a year and a week since the Sequim City Council fired city manager Bill Elliott, and nearly six months after the city failed to negotiate a contract with any of the candidates who came to town for final interviews.
Now the City Council is paying Waldron & Co., a Seattle search firm, $20,000 to recruit a permanent city manager.
Company founder Tom Waldron delivered a timeline to the council at Monday’s study session: interviews with council members this week, advertising for the position starting next week and a goal of bringing the cream of the candidates to Sequim in mid-August for interviews.
The position’s annual salary will be up to $115,000, said Linda Herzog, Sequim’s interim city manager.
Herzog, who’s drawn rave reviews from council members and others, has in recent weeks declined to say whether she’d seek the permanent job.
Herzog not interested
But on Tuesday, she quickly answered no to the question of whether she might become a candidate.
She didn’t elaborate but said that compared with other cities she’s managed, such as Mercer Island, Sequim is just plain “smaller.”
With its small staff, “there’s a lot more work per person than in a larger town,” she said.
The city’s water reclamation facility “is world class and cutting edge,” she added.
As for quality of life, “it’s a very appealing place in many ways,” and she’s confident that the city manager job announcement will likewise appeal to many an applicant.
Sequim has had an eventful and expensive year, however, when it comes to its government.
Herzog herself was recruited by Waldron & Co. last December, soon after Sequim Police Chief Robert Spinks, the interim city manager since Elliott’s May 5 dismissal, discovered he had a non-cancerous tumor on his auditory nerve.
He underwent surgery on Dec. 2, spent two months convalescing at home and returned to the Sequim Police Department in early February.
Last fall, the City Council and consultant Lee Walton narrowed a pool of city manager candidates to three finalists who were brought to town for tours, a reception and interviews in November.
In the end, the council couldn’t come to a hiring agreement with any of them.
Herzog took the interim post on Dec. 3 and signed a nine-month contract to expire Sept. 3. Her salary is $7,083 per month.
This spring she worked with Waldron to recruit Ben Rankin, city engineer of Clemson, S.C., to the position of Sequim public works director.
Rankin is expected to arrive in late June to succeed James Bay, who retired in April 2008. The city paid Waldron $18,000 for the recruitment process.
Though Herzog was out of town Monday and did not attend Waldron’s presentation to the City Council, City Clerk Karen Kuznek-Reese gleaned the meeting’s bottom line.
“We should have a new city manager by the middle of September,” Kuznek-Reese said.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.
