What We Know About the City Manager Applicants.

San Bernardino County Sentinel
Friday, August 28, 2009

Dozen Under Consideration in Grand Terrace
Twelve city manage­rial candidates, all of whom boast impressive credentials in the area of municipal operations, are now under consider­ation by the Grand Ter­race city council.
There were a to­tal of 37 applicants for the position, which has been unfilled since Tom Schwab, Grand Terrace’s city manager from 1989 until last year, was felled by a subdural hematoma in June 2008. Schwab was only the second city manager in Grand Ter­race’s 31 year history, having been preceded by Seth Armstead.
In Schwab’s medi­cal absence, the city’s managerial duties were assumed by then-assis­tant city manager Steve Berry, who served in the capacity of interim city manager until he was terminated in July. The city council has elevated Bernie Simon, the city’s finance director, to the post of interim city man­ager. It is anticipated that he will remain in that ca­pacity until a final candi­date is selected.
Simon is one of the thirteen candidates for the post. Simon, in some quarters at least, is con­sidered to be a lead­ing candidate for the position in that he has previous experience in Grand Terrace as finance director and possesses tremendous in­stitutional memory with regard to city operations and developments going back over a decade, as well as an unparalleled understanding of the city’s current and future financial prospects.
Another candidate, whose identity can be divulged is Grand Ter­race’s economic and community development director Joyce Powers. Like Simon, Powers is intimately familiar with operations at Grand Ter­race City Hall and em­bodies the advantage of having already acclimat­ed herself to the commu­nity and city operations.
“Joyce is a very quali­fied candidate, I would say,” Simon said. “That’s just my opinion.”
Regretfully, the Sen­tinel is not currently at liberty to disclose the names of the remain­ing ten candidates under consideration.
Simon, while noting that no legal obstruction existed to prevent the dis­closure of the identities of those vying for the po­sition, stated that some of the candidates had sub­mitted their applications with an implicit expecta­tion of confidentiality.
“This is a personnel issue,” Simon said. “We don’t like to talk about current applicants for several reasons, one of which is that an appli­cant’s current employer might not know that the employee has applied and if it were to be di­vulged who has applied that might cause him or her some trouble. The other reason is only one of these people will be selected ultimately and we don’t want that deci­sion to be viewed as a negative reflection on the other candidates.”
Simon did acknowl­edge that disclosure of those under consider­ation would have the practical effect of in­creasing the amount of information about the candidates under con­sideration being brought out and intensifying the scrutiny to which the po­tential employee will be subjected. Nevertheless, Simon said, the meth­od of allowing the city council to do its work in private, as it were, does not necessarily mean the candidates will not be carefully analyzed.
“If it comes out in the future that there was some problem with the council’s choice, that would show we have not done a good job investi­gating the background of those people who have been selected,” he said. “Hopefully, though, we’ll do a thorough job inves­tigating these people. We will make sure each person’s background is reviewed and any issues brought forward. The council is not going to make a snap judgment.”
The Sentinel has, through multiple sources including interviews with several of the applicants and/or their colleagues, learned and confirmed the identities of the ten outside candidates now being considered by the city council.

The candidates in­clude municipal employ­ees who have formerly worked, or are currently working, in the capaci­ties of city manager, city administrator, assistant city manager, deputy city manager, finance direc­tor, redevelopment direc­tor, economic develop­ment director, director of public works, communi­ty development director, human resources director and assistant to the city manager.

The candidates have worked in dozens of cit­ies up and down the state, including ones in San Bernardino, Riverside, Los Angeles, San Ma­teo, San Joaquin, Stan­islaus, Ventura and Napa counties. The size of the cities for which these candidates worked range from one with a popula­tion of over 500,000 to a town of less than 5,200 inhabitants.

At least one candidate has municipal managerial experience outside the state of Cali­fornia. One has taught municipal government and financial courses at the college level. One of the candidates is a certi­fied public accountant.

One of those candi­dates, at the age of 31, is among the youngest of individuals to have served in the post of city manag­er in Southern California in the last decade.