SEQUIM – The man who can build relationships and bridge wide budget gaps is to be Sequim’s new city manager, Mayor Laura Dubois said Tuesday night after the City Council spent nearly three hours evaluating two finalists’ qualifications.
After emerging from its long closed session, the council voted 6-1 to hire Vernon Stoner, former chief deputy to the Washington state insurance commissioner, former deputy operations director of the state Labor & Industries Department, former deputy CEO of Sound Transit and former manager of Lacey and Vancouver, Wash., and Saginaw, Mich.
The lone dissenter was council member Erik Erichsen, who left the council chambers without explaining his vote.
The council set his annual base salary at $120,000 and expects to finalize Stoner’s employment contract during its Sept. 14 meeting at 6 p.m. in the Transit Center, 190 W. Cedar St.
Stoner said he hopes to start work in Sequim on Oct. 5.
Dubois said Stoner impressed her in many ways, but most of all, with his ability to bring people together and work through difficult situations.
“He’s going to build strong relationships. That is his overwhelming quality. And the city needs that,” she said, adding that she believes the council, the city departments and the community at large will all benefit from Stoner’s leadership.
“It was an incredibly tough decision,” said Mayor Pro Tem Ken Hays, who with the rest of the council called back for second interviews Stoner and Steven Burkett, a candidate who managed cities including Tallahassee, Fla., and Fort Collins, Colo., before becoming a consultant.
Stoner “seemed ever so slightly more people-oriented,” Hays said, when the council reinterviewed him Tuesday evening.
Budget first priority
Stoner, 61, and his wife Sandi Swarthout live in Olympia, where she is a lobbyist.
Reached on his cellular phone while driving back Tuesday night, Stoner said his first order of business will be to “move [Sequim’s] budget forward,” as the city faces a revenue shortfall of as much as $850,000 going into 2010.
He has confronted such crises more than once: in Saginaw in 1989, General Motors shut down operations, and Stoner and his staff went door to door, explaining to residents that the city needed some way to raise revenue.
“They gave us a property tax increase,” he said.
At Sound Transit from 2001 to 2006, Stoner was part of the management team that steered the agency through a billion-dollar deficit and toward a balanced budget.
Stoner believes such successes come when people learn to work together toward a shared goal.
“I get along with people very well. I reach out,” he said.
A week ago Tuesday, when Stoner came to a public reception for the four finalist candidates for city manager, he didn’t flinch when asked how he would work with the often contentious City Council.
He relishes the challenge of helping a group become more productive; “I hope to be part of the solution” to the council’s divisions.
“It doesn’t matter what position you’re in,” Stoner added. “We’re all here for the city of Sequim.”
Tuesday’s decision by the Sequim council came after 16 months without a permanent city manager, since four newly elected members voted to fire then-manager Bill Elliott on May 5, 2008.
Linda Herzog, the interim chief who started work in December, finishes her nine-month contract today.
On Monday night, the council appointed City Attorney Craig Ritchie interim manager until his permanent successor arrives.
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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.
