City Beat: Council considers hiring city manager search firm

Council considered a bill march 10 that would provide $50,000 to hire an executive search firm to find a successor for City Manager Bob Cumley’s successor. Cumley is retiring June 1.

Mayor Pro Tem Gary Deaver, co-chairman of the city’s 21-member search group, said the group had telephone conversations with five companies and narrowed the field to two finalists: Pennsylvania-based Arcus LLC and Dallas-based Waters Consulting Group Inc.

“The kind of city manager we’re looking for is a passive candidate, someone who is not out of work or actively looking for work but is happy where they are and successful in their career,” Deaver said. “The two finalist firms have told us their specialty is finding those passive candidates.”

He added that the $50,000 would cover the firm’s fee and travel costs for both the candidates and search committee members who would travel to the candidates’ home cities to observe how they work.

Councilwoman Cindy Rushefsky pointed out that the chosen search firm will not be in charge of choosing the next city manager; its job is simply to find the most-qualified candidates.

She also attempted to alleviate concerns about the city spending money to bring in outside help, especially in the face of the city’s current budget issues.

“A really good city manager is what we need to lead us into the future, and he or she is going to have to lead us for, I hope, a number of years,” Rushefsky said, noting that other communities in similar situations have expressed the benefits of using a search firm. “I think this is a case where trying to save this money would be a poor bargain – something akin to, as my mother would say, saving the pennies and throwing away the dollars.”

Council is expected to vote on the bill at its March 24 meeting.

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Also on the agenda

• Council unanimously approved a joint facility for the city and county offices of emergency management, the Springfield-Greene County Emergency Communications Department and administrative offices for the Springfield Fire Department.

The resolution stated that the current facilities for those offices are inadequate and that combining the city and county offices would be more cost efficient than building or buying new space for each department.

“This (resolution) would allow staff to begin looking at possible locations, estimate costs of a new facility, and give us an opportunity to begin looking for funding sources,” Cumley told council.

• Cumley also gave council an update on the city’s budget crunch. He noted that the first 2008–09 budget workshop is scheduled for March 17 at Missouri Career Center, 1514 S. Glenstone Ave., in the Glen Isle Shopping Center.

He also said the city’s latest sales tax revenue check was up 1 percent from the same month in 2007. “We are still down about 0.6 percent for the year from this time last year, but at least we’re headed in the right direction,” Cumley said.