LONGVIEW — The Longview City Council has established the first steps of the search process for a permanent city manager, four months after the last city leader was fired.
The resolution passed with an overwhelmingly majority vote at Tuesday’s meeting, and creates two separate council subcommittees who will work with the city’s HR director to lay out the potential methods for a formal search process.
Both groups are expected to bring ideas back to the Aug. 27 council meeting for the full council to vote on the next steps.
One committee is comprised of Council members Erik Halvorson, Ruth Kendall and Keith Young. The other includes Council members Kalei LaFave and Angie Wean.
The resolution was proposed by Kendall and Mayor Spencer Boudreau, who said the search process would hopefully “build bridges” between council members after the divisiveness around Interim City Manager Jim Duscha’s hiring and former City Manager Kristina Swanson’s firing.
“(This will) ensure that whatever the end process with our manager search becomes, that it is exhaustive, it is thorough, and everyone who is a stakeholder has a piece of this process,” Boudreau said.
Boudreau said he hoped the city could emulate the search process the Longview School District used to find a superintendent earlier this year, with multiple events for the public to meet candidates and weigh in on the search process.
Questions about Longview’s next permanent city manager have swirled since Duscha was chosen in March, immediately after Swanson’s termination.
Tuesday night was the council’s third discussion about when to hire a permanent city manager, and by far the least contentious of the three meetings. The motion to start the search passed 6-1 with LaFave as the only vote against.
LaFave said she was worried adding the search process onto Duscha’s plate would be too much during the budget discussions this fall.
At one point, LaFave made a motion to hire Duscha immediately as the permanent city manager, and Young seconded. After a few minutes of other council members — including Boudreau and MaryAlice Wallis — opposing the idea, Young pulled his support and the idea was never voted on.
