2 remain in hunt to be Palmer’s next manager

PALMER — The search for a new city manager in Palmer has apparently reached its final stages with two candidates left as finalists.

Palmer City Council invited three finalists to the a meet-and-greet event last week at the Palmer Train Depot, followed by interviews at city hall. Those three men:

• Roy Eckert, III, former borough manager of the Ketchikan-Gateway Borough and now a city manager consultant in Georgia.

• Stephen Giesbrecht, city manager of Electra, Texas.

• Douglas Griffin, city manager of St. Mary’s, who formerly headed up Alaska’s Alcohol Beverage Control Board.

The council intends to invite Griffin and Eckert back for a second interview, this time privately. City Clerk Janette Bower said that so far a date hasn’t been set for that meeting, but she expects it will be sometime before the middle of September.

Palmer City Councilman Mike Chmielewski said he hopes council can do the interviews sooner than that.

“If everything floats along, I would suspect it would happen in another week or two,” he said. “It’s quite possible, it’s doable; we have time to have that meeting.”

Chmielewski didn’t want to handicap the decision by saying which of the two he prefers, but he did say he is confident one of the two will be the city’s next manager. If they weren’t worthy of the job, council would be soliciting applications again. Chmielewski said the hope is to have a new manager picked before the current city manager, Bill Allen, works his last day.

Bower said Allen’s contract expires Sept. 27. The council chose not to renew his contract in April, saying at the time that council members felt Allen was acting too independently.

So far, Chmielewski said, he’s been satisfied with the process. There were people who stayed last week to watch the council’s meeting with the three candidates all the way through and there were 60 or so people who flowed in and out of the meet-and-greet.

“That suggests that there was interest and people were able to actually spend the time and talk with all three candidates,” he said. “I felt the question and answer went well; it was a good way to do this.”

He noted that in 20 years the city has had only three managers: David L. Soulak, who died earlier this month, Tom Healy and Allen. Allen’s nearly three-year term was the shortest of those managers. But three years, Chmielewski said, seems to be somewhat typical in the state, especially recently. Palmer tends to hold onto its managers, meaning that a manager search is rare.

“We don’t do this very often,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.