Council Settles on Interview Process for City Manager, Approves Ballot Initiative to Expand Council

The East Lansing City Council accepted the Michigan Municipal League’s (MML) five suggested candidates to interview for the open city manager position and selected two alternates during a special meeting Wednesday (July 19).

Additionally, Council settled on an interview process that will include three phases: a formal interview with Council, a discussion with city staff members and a reception that is open to the public.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Council also quickly voted to approve a resolution that would expand the size of Council from five to seven members if voters are in favor of the City Charter change in the November election. Council voted in favor of the initiative at its last meeting, but an issue with the language in the resolution forced members to rescind their votes and pass it at this meeting with the language corrected.

Council accepts MML’s suggested candidates, selects two alternates.

MML Executive Recruiter Joyce Parker again presented to Council on the city manager search. She said after reviewing the resumes and personally conducting interviews, she had settled on five candidates from a pool of 14 she recommended Council advance to the next round of interviews.

“In some cases, it was difficult because, I believe – to a great extent – we had a good pool of candidates,” Parker said.

The candidates were kept anonymous and identified by numbers. Because many candidates already have jobs and they may not want their employers to know they are looking elsewhere, they will remain anonymous until they decide whether to accept interviews for the position.

Parker said MML picked candidates 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9 as the five finalists, but Council would need to agree to that selection and select two alternates in case desired candidates decided to drop out of the process or accepted a different position.

Council members agreed with Parker’s choice for the top five. After some deliberation, Council settled on candidate 14 as the first alternate, with four council members selecting them. Candidate 1 edged out candidate 2 by a single vote to be selected as the second alternate.

Councilmember Dana Watson asked about the demographics of candidates in the pool and the selected candidates.

Parker said the pool included “males, females and minorities” and that the recommended candidates included racial diversity but are all male.

When Watson began to ask if that changed with the alternates selected, City Attorney Anthony Chubb interjected to advise Council to select candidates based solely on qualifications.

Council followed that advice. But Watson and Mayor Pro Tem Jessy Gregg both spoke about the importance of including women in leadership and creating processes that allow that to happen.

“This also speaks to the interview processes where you get to the table and suddenly you’ve only made space for males,” Watson said.

Candidates will undergo a “gauntlet” interview process.

After much discussion, Council settled on an initial interview process that will include three phases all to take place Monday, Aug. 7. After the initial phase, Council may select two (or more) candidates to come back for final interviews.

The first phase will have each candidate sit down with Council members for a public interview that will last between 40 minutes and an hour. Parker advised the timeframe stay consistent for all candidates to be fair and because time management is an important skill for city managers to have.

Council members indicated they would like these interviews to be recorded so staff members and city residents can later review them. The plan is to do that.

Following their public interviews, candidates will proceed immediately to a second room that will include some department heads and other city staff members. There, they will be asked pre-prepared questions that will be consistent across candidates and get a chance to interact with staff.

Gregg said it is important to her that staff is included in the process, as she will be departing once her term expires in November but city staff will, hopefully, be working with the new city manager for decades to come.

“I would like feedback from our city employees before I make my top-two decision because I think that’s going to be a pretty critical part of my process,” she said.

Following the two rounds of interviews on Aug. 7, Council will hold a reception with all candidates that will be open to the public that same evening. Council said it would like that meeting to take place at 6 p.m. and at the Hannah Community Center, if the space is available.

After consulting with Parker, Council said it would like to allow members of the public to fill out cards or send emails to the city with their thoughts on the candidates. MML will then compile this feedback with the thoughts of staff members to be reviewed by Council.

While the process is intense, with Gregg calling the day a “gauntlet for candidates,” it is not considered unusual. Interim City Manager Randy Talifarro said he has been through a similar hiring process before.

Since the hiring process needs to be done publicly, Council will reconvene in a special meeting scheduled for Sunday, Aug. 13, at 10 a.m. to discuss the candidates and decide on finalists who will come back for final interviews.

Gregg questioned if it was necessary to bring back candidates for another round of interviews, given some are traveling from out of state.

Councilmember George Brookover said if Council reconvenes and are all completely content with a single candidate, they can always just make a decision. But follow-up interviews may be necessary.

“If somebody really wants to be the city manager of East Lansing, they’ll come back for a second interview,” Brookover said. “If they’re not willing to, that tells me something.”

Council approves third charter amendment to be decided on by voters, announces there may be a fourth on the ballot.

Council was finally able to pass a resolution asking voters to decide in the November election whether or not to expand the body from five to seven members.

At its last meeting, on July 11, Council voted to pass the resolution but had to retract the votes due to an error with the language in the resolution. The resolution passed by the same vote it had previously, 4-1, with Brookover the lone vote against.

Mayor Ron Bacon briefly spoke before the vote, saying it’s important to bring in more expertise to Council and that expanding the body will help to ensure a quorum is met.

“The more input and the more different types of opinions you can receive into this seat are critical,” he said.

After the vote, Chubb said there may be another ballot question come November that would drastically alter city elections.

“Just as a heads up, we do have a ballot initiative that is also a charter amendment,” Chubb said. “The clerk’s office is currently counting the signatures to determine if there is a requisite number of eligible qualified voters. And so, that will also be going to the attorney general’s office and the governor’s office for review.”

“To inform the public, that’s ranked choice voting, if you’re looking for something on the record,” Bacon added, with the meeting then concluding.

The East Lansing Charter Amendment ballot proposal put forth by RankMIVote calls for using ranked voting in City Council elections and also calls for allowing Council to call a special election to fill a vacancy. As it is now, the Charter requires Council to fill vacancies with appointees within 30 days.

ELi sent RankMIVote questions about the proposal on June 13, but the group has not yet answered all the questions despite several promises to do so soon.

New East Lansing rep named to the Board of Water and Light’s board.

BWL, the local electric utility, is owned by the City of Lansing. Following the disastrous ice storm of Winter Solstice 2013, Lansing voters agreed in 2014 to allow East Lansing to have a non-voting representative on the BWL Board.

Former East Lansing mayor Doug Jester has been serving in the role most recently but retired from it as of July 1. Jester took over the role after Bob Nelson resigned the position in 2017 over what he saw as BWL’s failure to adequately care for poor people in its service area. Nelson and Jester both came with extensive experience in the utility industry.

With a unanimous vote on Wednesday, Council named Jean-Richard (“J.R.”) Beauboeuf to the seat. Beauboeuf is a resident of East Lansing’s Whitehills Neighborhood and is the Director of Risk Management and Legal Services for Lansing Community College. His degrees are in economics and business administration.

Alice Dreger contributed reporting on the RankMIVote proposal and BWL story.