CM Search: Family Expenses

Over the weekend the common council received an email update from Karl Nollenberger of the PAR Group on the status of the search for a new city manager. We received 52 applications by the April 25 deadline, and Karl says he has interviewed 26 of them and done reference and Google checks on 24. On Thursday, each member of the council will be receiving a booklet containing materials for 13 candidates PAR feels should be considered as finalists.

On May 13th at 3 p.m., the council will meet with Mr. Nollenberger to try and narrow the candidate list down to 5 or 6 people we would like to bring to Oshkosh for interviews on June 6th and 7th. On May 13 we will also decide how to get citizen input on the candidates.

Our city policy, very reasonably, is to reimburse candidates for expenses. However, Mr. Nollenberger says that "it has become more the standard to also pay for candidates' spouses expenses since the decision on whether to accept the city manager position is a family decision." He says that cities differ on that policy.

I don't currently support spousal reimbursement, but am certainly open to arguments as to why it would be a good idea. The fact that "it's a family decision" for the candidate by itself is not a strong enough reason--at least not for me.

Not to sound like a broken record, but I still find it shocking that any community would choose to select its executive level leadership in this manner. In our region Neenah, Appleton, Menasha, and Green Bay elect mayors to serve as the chief executive of the city. The cost of choosing the executive is the cost of the election. We choose to spend thousands of dollars on buy outs, search firms, travel reimbursement costs, legal fees, etc. etc.