Chehalis will eventually be getting a new city manager, but it won’t be anytime soon.
After interviewing three candidates and receiving input from two advisory committees on Tuesday, the Chehalis City Council unanimously determined that none of the three finalists were qualified.
Instead, current City Manager Merlin MacReynold has agreed to stay on for two more years.
“I think the easiest way to put it is there wasn’t a candidate that the collective groups felt was a right fit,” said Chehalis Mayor Dennis Dawes. “I don’t want to sell any of those candidates short, but what we’re looking for is the fit we need for Chehalis.”
As Chehalis works on an agreement with the county to purchase a rail line from the city of Tacoma while continuing activities being undertaken by the Chehalis Foundation and the Chehalis Renaissance and also considering property annexation within the urban growth area, Dawes said that the council wants someone with more experience than any of the candidates had.
“It’d be like setting someone up to fail, and we didn’t want to do that,” he said.
None of the candidates have more than eight years of city management experience. MacReynold had about 15 years of experience when he came to Chehalis.
His contract extension will be brought before the city council Monday.
The three finalists were Michael Hart, the city manager for Davison, Michigan; Glenn Irby, the city manager for Umatilla, Florida; and Benjamin Marchant, the city manager of Coquille, Oregon.
Under the agreement the city has with Prothman, the staffing firm assisting Chehalis in the hiring process, the city won’t have to pay to restart the candidate search, but will have to cover travel costs incurred by company representatives, Dawes said.
MacReynold said the city’s initial contract with Prothman was around $18,000, but he wants to negotiate for some kind of “future benefit for the city” since the process wasn’t completed.
Chehalis will start considering candidates in 2016.
The city council has the authority to choose a city manager. Two other panels — a 14-person panel comprised of the city’s managers and mid-managers, and a nine-person community panel — interviewed the candidates and provided input to the city council.
MacReynold said he was “shocked” but pleasantly surprised when the city council asked him to extend his tenure.
“We’ve got a lot of stuff in the hopper that I’ve started and I’d like to see closure on those things,” he said.
Chehalis is in the second phase of raising the airport levee, while also working with staff from Discover! Children’s Museum to build a permanent location and negotiating with the Chehalis School District over its facilities.
“In other jurisdictions there’s always some of that stuff going on,” MacReynold said. “On paper (the candidates) looked fine. It’s the communication with the city council, community panel, the employee managers panel — no one came to the surface on that.”
Andy Skinner, director of the Lewis County Historical Museum, was on the the community panel. He said he was looking for someone who would work well with coalitions from across the community. After interviewing all the candidates, the panel didn’t offer a recommendation for any of them.
“It’d be different if things were going wrong, but with everything going as it is now … it’s going to be hard if not damned-near impossible to fill Merlin’s shoes,” Skinner said.
