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closePuyallup selects city manager search firm
Bellevue-based company to charge about $25,000; search to last at least three months
Neil Pierson/of The Herald
The Puyallup City Council has made the first concrete step toward hiring a new permanent city manager.
The council voted 4-0 with one abstention to hire Prothman Company, a Bellevue-based firm that has completed hundreds of searches for cities throughout the Northwest. Prothman is currently doing head manager or administrator searches for five other cities, including Issaquah and Newcastle.
The decision was made during a special council meeting on July 20, which was scheduled after the council adopted a timeline for the manager search in May. The council interviewed two other search firms: Seattle-based Waldron and Company, which conducted the city’s last manager search in 2001, and Bob Murray and Associates of Roseville, Calif.
Prothman Company’s president, Greg Prothman, worked in top managerial roles for the city of Des Moines for 12 years. He said Puyallup could expect to spend 90 to 120 days on a search, spending $19,000 on upfront fees and an additional $6,000 to $8,000 based on where and how often the company would have to travel to interview candidates.
Council members said they were comfortable choosing Prothman Company because they’re headquartered in the Northwest but have the ability to conduct a national search. The council was scheduled to discuss specifics of the search process with Prothman on July 27.
“This will be, by definition, a national search,” Prothman said, “because we will be on the Internet and we will have ads in probably 15 periodicals that professional city managers look at.”
Mayor Kathy Turner and Councilmembers Kent Boyle, Nicole Martineau and Don Malloy voted to hire Prothman Company. Deputy Mayor Tami Brouillet and Councilmember Rick Hansen were absent from the meeting.
Councilmember John Knutsen abstained from the vote, saying he preferred to freeze the city manager’s position until the next council took office in January 2012. Based on McLean’s final salary and benefits, the city could save more than $216,000 by not filling the job.
The council’s rules of procedure state a member shouldn’t abstain from a vote unless they stand to directly benefit personally or financially from the decision.
“They’re all fine firms but I’m not going to vote to accept any of them because it would put me in the position of voting for something that I don’t remotely approve of,” Knutsen said. “When I get to the point that we can’t freeze this thing and save the money and there’s going to be a city manager brought forward against my vote, I will participate in (the process) at that point.”
Martineau and Malloy said the city isn’t spending the money for a new manager’s salary at this point.
“I didn’t hear any of the search firms referring to a $200,000 figure,” Martineau said. “What I do know is that we’re looking to do a search, not necessarily find anybody at this point.”
Boyle agreed, saying Puyallup can’t wait for its financial outlook to improve before filling the position. The city is expecting to have a $5 million budget deficit in each of the next two years.
“We’re in a situation where we just can’t project anything,” Boyle said. “And so to use a budget to hold us back from making a search for city manager, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
Prothman said Puyallup should benefit because of the company’s numerous ongoing searches, which has opened up a large candidate pool.
“Our website gets 10,000 visits a month from potential candidates,” he said. “I can honestly tell you that I know every city manager on a first-name basis in the state of Washington and perhaps two-thirds in Oregon.”
Prothman felt the city could expect to receive 40 to 60 applications. His plan would be to trim that number in half before any detailed background searches or interviews took place. Eventually, after meeting with the council privately and gauging their opinions, he would like to form a list of four to six finalists.
If the next city manager left within two years of being hired, the firm would do a new search without another $19,000 flat fee, Prothman said, though Puyallup would pick up the costs for travel and advertising.
Prothman’s proposal also includes reviewing the city’s salary level for the position. Each applicant would have to submit nine detailed references and have their educational and professional backgrounds thoroughly investigated.
“I try to build a mountain of data on each of these folks,” he said. “If I find they’ve lied anywhere on their résumé to me, I’m going to recommend we remove them from the process.”