Agenda - Council - 03/08/2022 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Councilmember Specht commented if they were in a contract with Stillwater they wouldn't be able to recruit Tim if they were in that last round with Ramsey, so it could go both ways. He would still like to try to do it internally before investing money into it, even if it would mean hiring an interim, then they could see what people are interested in. If after a few weeks they aren't getting the quality candidates needed, it would push the time back a bit but he felt the short timeframe would be worth the savings. Mayor Kuzma asked for a show of hands vote for going in-house versus outsourcing. The majority Council vote was to do an internal recruitment. Councilmember Heineman stated that recruiting is big and the elections are big also so anything outside of those two things that are taking Administrative Service Director Lasher's time, if resources could be allocated to that so she could focus on these things and do them well would be appropriate. Administrative Service Director Lasher replied, not at this time, there is a lot going on. Mayor Kuzma stated for the record that he feels like outsourcing recruitment should be done but was willing to give it a chance and see how it goes. He has concerns about overloading. Councilmember Howell asked if development of what they are looking for is going to be done together or is Administrative Service Director Lasher going to be sending out what has been done in the past and send feedback. City Administrator Ulrich recommended using the current criteria used and have it on the Work Session agenda for next week. Councilmember Riley commented that he didn't support the idea of throwing it out and see what happens, because this is not a try, it is a do. If it is going to be done internally, it has to be done right. He stated it shouldn't be do it internally and see what happens and then find out if it could be done another way, it has to be done right. He reiterated what Councilmember Heineman said, if there are duties that need to be reallocated then this Council has made the decision that needs to happen. Administrative Services Director Lasher replied she takes a lot of pride in recruiting. She stated she didn't want to outsource when recruiting for Deputy City Administrator Hagen and she was glad they didn't as she is happy with the outcome even though it was a tremendous amount of work. She stated that going into recruitment after Tim left, they had decided that they would interview everyone who met the minimums because everyone has a different opinion. She believed they did 21 first interviews and that was a tremendous amount of work and Staff resources. She stated they will have to talk about how to manage that as there were evening interviews and was a lot to manage with phone calls, scheduling and questions. She stated that the number one suggestion in an effort to streamline the process is to try to not interview 21 people. As far as redistricting and the elections, there is not a lot of room for making mistakes. She stated City Council Special Work Session/February 15, 2022 Page 6 of 31