Palmer begins manager search

PALMER — With the city’s top administrator planning a May departure, Palmer City Council Members made some decisions Tuesday about how they will seek his replacement.

Doug Griffin told the council just before the start of the year that he planned not to renew his contract when it ended in May. He’s been manager in Palmer for about three years.

Much the same way it did when hiring current city manager Griffin, the council will search on its own rather than hiring a consultant or headhunting firm to embark on a national search.

“I lean toward, and have for many years, a local search,” said councilwoman Linda Combs. She said she found no fault with the national applicant pool, just that “there’s plenty of qualified people in the state of Alaska. I personally would like to look at them first.”

Though the search will focus mainly in Alaska, the advertising will have a slightly broader reach than that. Councilman Richard Best won the council’s approval for a proposal to advertise in Alaska outlets — newspapers in Mat-Su, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and the Kenai Peninsula, and through the Alaska Municipal League — the city also plans to advertise with the International City/County Managers Association and through the Anchorage Daily News with careerbuilder.com.

As with Griffin’s hiring, the council intends to vet applicants through a committee that would sort the wheat from the chaff.

“It’s the way to go if you’re going to do it this way. You don’t want to see 70 applications. You want to see eight relevant applications,” said councilman Brad Hanson, who sat on that committee during the last search.

Background checks were another issue the council brought up. Hanson said that in the last manager search, the city tasked its public safety director, Jon Owen, with conducting those checks. Some of the information that came back on one candidate in particular was sensitive in that it contained allegations and innuendo rather than criminal charges.

“I know that there was that situation last time and it was awkward,” Hanson said.

The council didn’t make a decision on who would do the background checks, though there was brief discussion of hiring an outside firm.

Hanson said that Owen and everyone else took their jobs seriously and did them responsibly.

“And we got the right guy,” he said of Griffin.

Hanson said he’s been involved with a manager search without a committee and, comparing the two, prefers the committee route.

As far as who would sit on that committee, Best got universal approval for a suggestion the council should put that off. Potential members include local attorney Jack Snodgrass — who helped on previous searches — and Palmer Mayor DeLena Johnson. Neither was at the meeting to ask if he or she would like to participate. Deputy Mayor Steve Carrington said he’d contact them.

Only one member of the public attended the meeting, John Alcantra, formerly a government liaison for the National Education Association spending three months a year in Juneau.

“The chances of me applying for this job are probably high,” he said.

But, self interest aside, he said Alaska has plenty of qualified candidates, many of whom are fully invested in their communities.

“It’s not a place I am going to leave,” he said.

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