Then there were 3

PALMER — The list of candidates to replace the departing Palmer city manager has shrunk to three.

At the end of last week, the city offered the position to Rick Koch, city manager for Kenai.

City clerk Janette Bower, one of two people the council authorized to conduct salary negotiations with Koch, explained at a council meeting Tuesday that she offered Koch one salary and he had made a counter offer, which she told him was outside the range city council had authorized.

“I did not give him back the top number of the range, which in hindsight I wish I would have,” she said.

On Monday, Koch emailed the city to decline the position. She got back in touch with him, told him what the range was, and then said he could negotiate with the council directly, but Koch stuck by his rejection.

Word came Wednesday from the Skagway News that a second candidate had fallen off the list.

“Scott Hahn accepts Skagway manager position,” reads a news alert posted to that newspaper’s website, before going on to say that the position had been offered to him April 3 and that Hahn had accepted it Wednesday morning.

That leaves three candidates on Palmer’s list:

• Carey Meyer, public works director for the city of Homer.

• Jon Owen, Palmer’s director of public safety.

• Joseph Hannan, who is between jobs having declined to renew his contract as a city manager in Washington state.

Exactly what the city council is going to do next remains nebulous. Councilman Richard Best suggested offering a one-year contract to Hannan with moving expenses both to get him up here and, after the year, send him back if it doesn’t work out.

“If we offer a one-year and then double-up on the moving expenses, that makes it a little bit more palatable. And then they get to see what we’re about and we get to see what they’re about,” Best said.

The council didn’t go for that idea. Instead, it called a special meeting for April 15 to figure out what its next move is.

Councilwoman Edna DeVries asked if the council could add names to the list. City attorney Michael Gatti said they could.

“If anyone wants to bring forward a name for consideration for the night that we’re going to be discussing this, they can give that name to the clerk,” mayor DeLena Johnson told the council.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270

or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.