Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007-09-15 Transcription September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 1 September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session 8:00 A.M. Council Present: Bailey, Champion, Correia, Elliott, O'Donnell, Vanderhoef, Wilburn Staff Present: Dilkes, Karr, Mejia Other Present: Abbie Volland, UISG Rep.; Andrea Sims, Waters-Oldani; Robert Slavin and Paul Wenbert, Slavin; Richard "Dick" Kobayaski, Bennett Yarger; and Robert Beezat, PAR Group Interviews With Search Firms: Wilburn! Before we bring the first.. .I'm sorry. Urn, before we bring the first search firm in, urn, I think what we...! gathered from last time we got together, we'll uh do some quick introductions. We'll hear their presentation. Council will then ask questions, and in order to make sure everybody has an opportunity to ask a question, I thought maybe we'd each pick one, and then if there's other questions after that, just open it up for anyone. But, and then, with each firm we'll just alternate who starts first. Does that sound good? Okay, all right. (several talking at once) Good morning. And are you Andrea? Sims/ Yes, I'm Andrea Sims with Waters-Oldani Executive Recruitment. Wilburn! Okay, I'm Mayor Ross Wilburn, and uh, what we, what I thought we'd do today is do some brief introductions. I'll have the Council Members introduce themselves.. .uh, I guess the process that we're looking at is that we'd give you an opportunity to make your presentation. We've seen the request for qualifications that your firm sent in. Then, uh, Council will take some time after your presentation to, uh, ask questions. We'll just go around the circle so everybody has a chance to get a question in, and then, uh, any follow up questions that anyone has will take place at.. .at that time, so, again, welcome and thank you for showing an interest in helping us with our.. .with our search, and I already said that I'm Ross Wilburn, 'so, Amy, you want to... Correia! Amy Correia, and I serve an At-Large capacity on the City Council. Elliott! I'm Bob Elliott, same, At-Large. Vanderhoef! Dee Vanderhoef, At-Large. V olland/ I'm Abbie Volland. I'm the Student Government on the City Council.. . Liaison. Champion! Connie Champion. O'Donnell! Mike O'Donnell. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 2 Bai1ey/ Regenia Bailey. Sims/ Hello. Wilburn! Take it away! Sims/ Well, first of all, thanks for the opportunity to meet with you all. I am a morning person, but you even tested me. (laughter) Urn, our firm, urn, specializes in public sector search. We have actually, urn, I have been with Waters-Oldani Executive Recruitment since 05 when the firm was reconstituted with the, urn, former, urn, the Oldani Group, but I was formerly with Jerry Oldani who takes pride in the fact that your last City Manager, he helped place, you know, 20 years ago. So he sends his best. Again, we specialize in public sector search. We do this on a national basis. We take a lot of pride in the quality of our services, the thoroughness of our services, and our sensitivity to the special issues affecting the public sector. Urn, I'm going to give you a little bit of history about me. I know that they put a bio in, but again, I've been with Waters-Oldani since it was reconstituted. Urn, I also have done a number of City Manager searches in, urn, large and small communities. Done a number of searches in university-oriented towns. Urn, Evanston, Charlottesville, Ann Arbor, College Station, and again, we're just aware of issues affecting the public sector, and issues of town and gown issues that all communities face. We don't try to put, uh, a stamp on, you know, because you're college-oriented community that you're just going to be like Ann Arbor or Charlottesville, but we're just familiar with some of the issues that you experience. Urn, after graduate school I actually was with the former AT&T Long Lines, which no longer exists, and, urn, some kind of way it all came back together again, but I kind of left after about seven years while they were getting things together and was with an insurance company, Progressive Insurance, which was based in Cleveland; National City Bank and had several years of public sector experience, which has boded me very well in helping people in the search process, and helping people in the recruitment process. Urn, in my former life I did a lot of technology work. I was a former Technology Director, and when people ask why you would do search after doing technology, uh, in the 90's, a lot of what we were doing was looking for really good people to do technology and in all organizations I was a part, I was always very active in the recruitment process. Currently, I'm doing searches for Mecklenburg County, for Dallas, uh, just finished a City Manager search for, uh, Ramsey, Minnesota, and that shows my ability to do large and small organizations because we really make sure that we understand what your needs are, what your issues are, so that we can make sure that the profile that we come up with that we use as our, as your marketing tool, will actually meet the needs of the organization in th~ long term. The way we start our search process is what we call the "specing process." We come in, we spend a day or two with the organization, and we pick your brain. You know, what were the strengths of the last City Manager, what opportunities, what's your vision as a Council, what do you want to see in your community. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 3 Urn, there have been instances in which we've simply had, urn, because again we would be coordinating with Sylvia or whomever you would chose as the Project Manager. There have been instances in which we've had community members who have been a part of the process. We send a questionnaire ahead oftime, uh, with about ten questions to make people think about, you know, what they want to see in the next City Manager. You can have community members participate, urn, in, urn, answering those questions. You can have those types of questions on your web site with the, uh, or in a survey form in your Library, coming back to our offices, but some kind of way. We just want to make sure that we get a good feel for both what the Council wants to see and, urn, what the community is interested in in the next City Manager. Urn, we compile the information into a marketing brochure and urn, we...I know you have some of those in the materials that we sent you, but you know we take pride. They're pretty. They have pictures that you provide, but it sells both the community, We get a lot of information from, you know, your web site, from the Chamber of Commerce because we sell the organization, but then we sell the position, because what we're really trying to get to the heart of is what do you really expect the next City Manager to do? Urn, some organizations, they're looking for a person who has a lot of experience with building, if they're doing a lot of construction in their community. Urn, you know, just reading the newspapers, the web sites, it sounds as though they're, you know, they're always.. .you know, town and gown is interesting, because, you know, people love it, and then people, you know.. .don't always! (laughing) So .you have to work through the issues. Urn, you know, there's an issue with crime. You know, and how those issues work with your Police Department, and with the Campus Police, and the issues that, you know, that they're dealing with the Board of Regents. I mean, if you want someone who's had those types of experiences, either in a, you know, college town or in a city where they've had to deal with these types of things. You know, those are the types ofthings we look for. But anyway, we, urn, put together the information, the profile. We send in a draft form to your organization. Make sure that we capture the essence of what you want to see, and then we put it out there. And when we say we put it out there, we develop a mailing list of targeted individuals, City Managers, Assistant City Managers, people in the field. We have a strong partnership with ICMA, and urn, and, urn, FBP A, urn, and actually in I think the second week in October, the ICMA conference is going to be in Pittsburgh, and our firm has a large booth and that, you know, that is one of the places where we're planning on letting people know the hot searches out there, and so, you know, knowing that, urn, this was on, you know, upcoming, even if we don't have the profile fully put together, would be a great way to market. But again, we put together this pretty package. We send it out via email. We send it out via snail mail. Because we're trying to hit people who may not be currently looking for ajob. You, urn, it's always wonderful to get people who are actively looking because then you don't have that whole thing with, 'Well, maybe I'll leave maybe I won't.' If you get somebody who, you know, they've already committed to going for whatever reason, you know, that's a wonderful situation, but anyway.. .we try to go after the people who are actively looking and those who we might have to draw into This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 4 the process. We, uh, come up with a list of applicants. We.. . all the resumes come into our organization, even if they try to circumvent the process and send them through your organization, they ultimately come through us. We treat everybody the same, whether you have internal people or not. We get them, make sure that they meet the profile that has been agreed upon, we send them a questionnaire to make sure that we get essence of information that are provided, any special certifications, we can clarify any degree issues. We don't check degrees at that time, but typically...a lot of times people will put degrees on that they might not have finished, but when you ask them to get the date, they usually get a little more specific or will explain a little bit more, and I mean, if they're named a finalist, we're going to go to their school registrar, so, I mean, you know, in some kind of way they're going to have to, you know, admit what's going on, but anyway, we get the resurne. We send you a questionnaire, and we share that information with you all, so in a meeting to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the initial candidates, and typically you would have 25,30 candidates apply, and we try to get the list down to 10 to 12 for us to follow up on. Following up means that we would, urn, give them an electronic management assessment tool. It's a test that they take on line. We have a Ph.D. on board who talks about strengths and weaknesses, based on that tool. They also share list of accomplishments, critical problem that they're dealing with, uh, provide a copy of the org chart. If they have them, provide a copy of their last couple of performance evaluations, and based on.. ,and we have an in-person interview with them, and I say in-person. It's typically by videoconference, but if they happen to be in, you know, if I'm going to be in their area or they're going to be in my area, we'll do an in-person ifit's more cost-efficient. Urn, the videoconference interviews are typically done at Kinko's. We have a person in our office who has a list of all the Kinko's all across the country and what kind of equipment they have, and I just let her know my schedule and she tells me when to be there, and we, urn, generally works. We do an hour interview, and we get, again, to the essence of what the person has actually done that fits with your organization. At that time, too, we get through a fairly extensive list of "due diligence" questions, and the due diligence are, you know, just flags to make sure that ifthere are any issues that you all need to be aware of, you know, we can make you aware of them. Urn, following the completion of the 10 or 12 interviews, I prepare a discussion document of the pros and cons on each, and share that with you all, so that we can jointly come up with the top five candidates, and when we get down to the top five candidates, that's when we're preparing them to come and, uh, interview here. We help to facilitate it. What we suggest is a process in which the person gets to learn about the organization through orientation process, urn, tours of the community, and then you get a chance to learn about them. We provide a profile of the candidate. We write up, again, we've had a few discussions with them by that point, and we write a three or four-page document on them. You get a chance to see their write-ups of their accomplishments, critical problem. We (unable to hear - coughing) them, we do Alexis Nexis search, urn, again, to make sure that all the things that, you know, they said were issues, or said weren't issues are valid, and urn, we go from there. We typically This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 5 coordinate so that we come out at the same time, so that we can, again, you know, at this point we're turning the process over to you all because again, urn, we felt that the five people we give you are qualified candidates, and then it's up to the candidates, and you all, to decide who fits best with your organization, but we do help to coordinate. We put together the suggested interview questions. We make sure the candidates are aware where they're supposed to be, when they're supposed to be there, and again, urn, at that time, I kind of quit talking. You know, I do an orientation for the candidates ofthe process, and then, urn, during the interview it's up to you all to, urn, get through, make sure that you feel comfortable with, you know, who we've selected. We take pride in our guarantee. We call it a triple guarantee because we give you the five candidates, urn, hopefully you're going to love at least two ofthem, and we'll help you coordinate to come up with whose the best out of the two for your organization, urn, come up with the offer letter, negotiation - all those wonderful things. But there are cases in which you say, naw, really don't like 'em. Ifthat's the case, urn, as part of our guarantee, we go back out there and find the right person for your organization, and urn, you know, there are no other professional fees. There may be other. . .I mean, if we do video conferencing again, those types ofthings, you know, we charge you for those expenses, but we do a pretty good job of making sure that we give you a diverse pool, and diversity is very important to our organization. Urn, we take a lot of pride in presenting a diverse candidate pool, urn, you know, 60 to 70% ofthe time, and diverse in color, diverse in, urn, women in the candidate pool, and diverse in parts of the country that the pool will be from. So, urn, and age of the candidates. Typically, we, you know, have more mature candidates, urn, especially nowadays, with the profession of City Manager so, urn, strong. Typically you can get people, you don't have to necessarily get a person who is "just starting out," and has the interest. We give you people who have proven themselves, either as City Managers or as Assistant or Deputy City Managers in a community, in a relevant community, so... Wi1bum/ And, urn, I'm sorry, do you pronounce it Andrea or Andrea? Sims/ I pronounce it Andrea. Wilbum/ Andrea, okay, I didn't want to mess up your name. I neglected to introduce our City Attorney Eleanor Dilkes, uh, I don't know if you met Marian, our City Clerk. Sims/ Nice to meet you! Wilbum/ And I'll ask Marian to please help me keep an eye on the time, too, and you've already met Sylvia. Urn, let's see, urn, Amy, did you want to start, also.. .with questions, also I'll remind the Council if you want to pass this first go around, you know, feel free to do that and maybe another question may come up, or a follow up question. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 6 Correia! Sure. So it sounds like, thank you for being here and for.. . sounds like you've been doing some pre-research on the community, says that (unable to hear), so obviously you're going to have an opportunity to learn from us, if your firm's selected, more about what we want, urn, but based on what you know so far about the community, urn, what values or issues do you think are important to Iowa City? . Sims/ What I typically see with university-oriented communities is, even when people haven't been associated with the university, community is very engaged. It's just. . .it seems like just having the university presence gets, urn, gives you a stronger, more empowered base of citizenry, so you have to have a, you know, person who is comfortable with that. Urn, you have to have a person who is comfortable working with a university. Urn, again, it's a beautiful thing to have a university, the energy, the enthusiasm, the newness, the fresh ideas coming, from both the student population and the faculty, but there're challenges. Urn, you know, economic development is different when you're, you know, competing with commercial interests and the university, and you know, who wins or loses, or has a partnership. Urn, the issue of crime, urn, the issue of. . .rental and housing, urn, these are issues that I would, you know, expect to see as part of your issues. And I'm, you know, again, that's why I, that was going to be one of my questions for you all, you know, past what I've read, the other things that you all would see, Elliott! Do one at a time and then we'll go back? Wilburn! Yeah, one at a time and then we'll go back around. Elliott! I'll follow up on that. On page nine of your proposal, you point out that there is an additional fee for community involvement, and uh, I'm a little concerned about thatbecause, especially in a university community, that is an integral part of the way we do things. So if you could just talk about how you have handled community involvement in the past, and urn, why it's not a part of the process. Sims/ It. . . Elliott/ Excuse me, it's called an additional step. Sims/ Yeah, it can be an additional step, and again, I've been in situations in which we have, urn, we typically, again, have, you know, 10, 15 questions when we're doing the specification for the search. If we're having a community forum, that would be typically another big piece of thing to do, urn, if we're treating community members, say if we get heads of boards, commissions, citizen council and include them in the people that I do the interview when I come to start the search, you know, that's not a big issue. Urn, that wouldn't be an additional fee. But if we were going to do a separate forum and urn, help to coordinate and facilitate and make sure that we try to get salient points from it that's why there's the issue of the additional fee. It's just, you know, really the time. The way we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 7 price our professional fees, it assurnes that we'll be here for one day to start the process, and another full day to, uh, help close out the process, and you would just pay for, you know, our additional time. Vanderhoef/ You mentioned probably 25 to 30 applicants. Are you seeing, uh, a downturn in number of applicants out there, qualified people? And how are you going about enticing some people who think they're okay with where they are to consider a move? Sims/ That's part of our direct mail piece, and that's part of our direct marketing piece. We have, urn, strong telephone relationships and networking relationships with people in the industry, and we have a good feel for who we think is ready for, urn, a move and we will, urn, you know, continue those discussions. When we have other searches in which the Council picks a person that, you know, we felt was qualified but there were a couple of others out there, we let them know about this opportunity also. But, urn, we've just seen a downturn in people being willing to move, and it's just a function of the complexity ofpeople's lives. Uh, lot oftimes when we are, urn, presenting candidates to you, we're very honest. I mean, one of the questions we ask is, you know, are there, you know, are all parties in your life comfortable with your interviewing and this process, and that's the time for them to say, you know, well I have a trailing spouse who, you know, would have to find comparable or better work. I have, you know, a child entering the junior, senior year in high school. In some cases it's okay because they're trying to get to a community where their child might want to go to college, but other times it's, you know, they're going to be looking at a, urn, you know, dual household until that child finishes, which some people are ready to take on and others aren't. So we, urn, you know, we're sensitive to it and we just recognize it. People just are, urn, less, uh, open to move nowadays. Urn, some of it is the generational issue too. The Boomers, you know, kind of moved at the drop ofa hat and they're slowing down, getting tired, and Generation X' ers saw the Boomers move and were like, 'I'm not doing that!' (laughter) Vanderhoef/ Thank you. Sims/ Sure. Wilburn! What guidelines do you typically recommend to a council, a community, that's looking for a participatory search process? What guidelines.. . (coughing, unable to hear) do you recommend? Sims/ Get input, recognize that you want to hear what they have to say, but it is ultimately Council's decision. And even if there. . .I'm helping to facilitate a process where there is a, uh, department level panel, interview panel, you know. I'll make sure to facilitate getting their input in terms of pros and cons on each of the candidates, but I will let them know that I'm sharing that information with This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 8 either the City Manager or the Council, and it is their decision, and you know even though their input is sought, that it is ultimately you all's decision. Volland! I'm going to follow up with Dee's question, and I'm just curious how you help families with the transition, if they're apprehensive about moving, how you would help them to find a new job or those kinds of situations. Sims/ We don't specifically help with that, but we help.. .wemake the organization aware of that so that when you're planning the final process, especially at a city manager level, it may not be when you have the final five come, but it may be when, you know, the final one or two come back for the second interview, to give them resources to speak to, either the University or the community, so that they can have some comfort level. Urn, we just had a, this was actually an HR Director search in Yuma where the candidate, you know, he funded his wife coming out for that final process, and she is actually a nurse who can get a job faster than he could anyway (laughter), but it made, you know, it made her more comfortable with the process and urn, I was talking to the City Manager last night and he was saying, especially for a city like Yuma that.. .Yuma, Arizona, people aren't as knowledgeable about, he's going to recommend to his Council that they put that as part of a process to offer to bring the spouse. Champion! I'm interested in the facilitation of the final candidates, not necessarily what we want in a city manager. Urn, have you worked with a search that would have you facilitate the final candidates being interviewed by us, of course, by a group of staff, and by a community group. Sims/ Uh-huh. Champion! Okay. Sims/ Sure. You know, we provide the suggested interview questions. We go over the questions with you all in an orientation process ahead of time to make sure that we're getting to the essence of what you want to see, and you know, if you have, you know, if you have questions that you'd like to see in there, we make sure that they're included in. If they're bordering on legal issues, we'll help with that. Champion! And then, I'm sorry, I just wanted to follow up quickly, urn, because it is ultimately our decision, how do you handle the other two groups, the staff and the community group that's going to be interviewing these candidates, to keep them from ranking them so they're not mad if we don't select their top choice? (laughter) Sims/ Well, a couple of things. . .coup1e of things we try to do is, one, we try to break up the groups so that you don't have too many strong personalities together that would, you know, participate in the ranking process, and I know that's tough to manage, so I mean, I'd be facilitating, you know, I'd be working a lot because This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,2007. . September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 9 you all know your citizenry better, you know, than we could possibly, and urn, but couple oftimes I have gotten to know a couple of people really well. (laughter) Urn, but, we, you know, we recommend a mix in the group and we also, at the end of their session, we go over the pros and cons on each of the candidates. We don't push, in fact we do not encourage them to rank candidates, you know, we don't give them rating sheets or anything like that. We go through the pros and cons and keep it at that, and make sure when we do the orientation process for them, and when we get their feedback for the feedback that, you know, we thank them for their input and we, you know, share that these things will be forwarded upward. O'Donnell! You answered one of my questions, um, in your presentation because sometimes the best candidate isn't looking for a job or don't know they're looking for a job. I wanted to follow up on Bob. I was, I also thought that a public, community forum should have been part of this, and I was a little bit concerned with the extra charge, but you're likely in Iowa City, if you have three forums, to have the same people show up at all three forums. Urn, that's very likely in Iowa City, so what do you do to encourage participation from the community? How do you do that? Or is that our responsibility? Sims/ That is more of your responsibility, but we give you a few venues, We've done a couple of searches; I remember when we did, gosh, Minneapolis Police Chief about four years ago. We had the questionnaires available on the Minneapolis web site, on our web site. They had them in their Police Departments, in libraries, and you know, all the questionnaires came back to our offices, and we compiled the results, and you know, it wasn't funny, but it was. I just remember the person who was compiling the results, and she was saying, she said, 'Well, you know what's consistent is everybody is mad.' You know, they couldn't come up (laughter) they could not come up with a constituency that wasn't angry, and I mean, you know, police have a tough job. But, again, um, it's helpful, people who need to make sure that they understood that they're heard. Urn, we're not going to beat up the organization in our brochure, but the section called "current issues" is usually where, you know, urn, issues with the citizenry, issues with the University, uh, moral issues, uh, financial issues. Those are where we discuss those things, and we...I mean, again, we're selling the organization, but we also want to make sure that the person selected knows what they're getting into, and that they've shown the ability to get through like.. .you know, like circumstances. Bailey/ Thank you for being here this morning. We've had a lot of community leadership change in the last year.. .the President ofthe University.. . and we've also had some changes within the organization, and I think that there will come a time .. . and it's an election year, so this will bridge an election. And so I think that at some point we're going to hit change burnout a little bit and so what unique challenges will that present to this search process, and um, the process that we set forth now, and how might that change by the end? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 10 Sims/ What I would suggest, and the other thing is you're going to be running into the holidays (laughter) you know, just... Bai1ey/ Oh, yeah, a constant change, yeah. Sims/ I mean, but you know, just the realities of the search process. What I would suggest is for the process as it stands is if we could get, you know, if our firm were to be selected, or whomever, you know, starts your search, urn, to get the profile done, urn, as soon as possible, and to put the word out there, advertise on the professional sites, you know, ICMA, you know, the city/county managers web site, urn, you know, Forum for Black Public Administrators, Hispanic Network, urn, you know, advertise on those venues, urn. Ifit was us, we'd also be advertising, we'd have a draft brochure, we'd have just a, you know, quick flyer, with your pictures on it saying, you know, city manager, Iowa City at ICMA, so that we can do the initial collection of resumes, and get the questionnaires out so that whether you chose to wait until, urn, you know, that timing actually would take you to a pretty decent point because you could wait until after the November election to select who the semi-finalists are. And then use the rest ofthe year for us to have the, urn, interviews with the persons, and prepare the pros and cons, so that when you come back from the, 00, holidays that, you know, you'll be in a position to name the finalist, to move forward, because to be brutally honest, people aren't going to want to come in if they don't know who they're going to be working for. And it's just human nature, and I shouldn't say it. Not every...I mean, the people, there's, you know, going to be people that want to come to Iowa City. They have a reason for wanting to come here. They may be more open to it, or if they're unemployed, they may be more open to it, but people who have jobs, they're not going to want to come where there's a lot of uncertainty, so they'd want to see some sense of stability so, you know, having the final interview process in January would, you know, suffice. Even though all ofthe dynamics wouldn't have been worked out, at least, you know, so be. Some. stability. Wilburn! Urn, 1'11 have a question, then just open it up for any Council Member, Can you provide some more details, specifics, on how you go about recruiting a diverse candidate pool, and comment on any challenges you think we might hear, have here? Sims/ Sure, urn, again, we have relationships with ICMA. We have relationships with Forum for Black Public Administrators, I'm on the business board. We have other members of our organization who are on their board of directors, and we put advertisements in both professional journals and we have direct mailings to people, you know, in that, in those organizations, Similarly with, you know, women candidates that we met through other searches or know through the industry, have seen progress through the industry. We don't directly go back and recruit people that we've placed other places, but if they get a mailing and they call us, that's okay. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 11 Wilburn! Can you also comment on any challenges you think we might have? You already...in Dee's question you already mentioned about, uh, just kind of the.. .just any other challenges that we might have here, in terms of diversity? Sims/ Yeah, I mean, making sure people understand the diversity of the community, and that the community is welcome and open to diverse candidates. Urn, you know, you're going to have the person who wants to make sure that, you know, there's openness to them as a candidate. If they have a family, they want to make sure that there's openness, comfort level for their family members, uh, safety issues. Again, people are looking past, urn, just the job, but the overall quality of life. So, that's why we, uh, try to hit up some of the things that, uh, when we talk about the community, we talk about those kinds of (unable to hear).. . situations. I remember, urn, I, uh, when I was in college, I remember, uh, I was from Los Angeles and I went to college in Georgia. It was, you know, everyone was from everywhere else, and I remember, uh, friends from Colorado, Kansas, and Iowa specifically, and said, 'There are black people here!' You know, and I was looking at the material you had out there showing African-Americans in elected officials. When I was at the airport yesterday, there was a conference for African- American women. I'm sure there are similar venues for other, urn, persons of color, women, and you know, you have to use that as a sales point, and to be honest, it.. .when you have your final process, it's important to have, urn, persons represented who can help facilitate that type of openness. Elliott/ I have a question, Andrea. Uh, liked your proposal. I liked the five tasks. One of the things that concerned me was you did many searches, but there were four I believe I put down 230 different cities, predominantly Texas and west coast. There were only about 30 cities in the Midwest. Do you feel.. .do you feel you have enough experience recruiting in Midwest cities? Sims/ I do, yes. You know, Waters is in Texas, so that's where most of my colleagues are. Elliott/ Uh-huh. Sims/ Uh, the Oldani Group was formerly based in Bellevue, Washington. I'm in Cleveland. So, I'm, you know, I'm okay with the Midwest. (laughter) Elliott! You never left Cleveland after Progressive, huh? Sims/ No, I didn't. I moved a lot. When I moved into our house in Cleveland, I think I counted I had lived in 13 places. So, I mean, our son actually left for college, you know, living in the same house that, you know, that he was born and it just blew me away, because I was fairly mobile, but, urn, I'm very comfortable with, uh, most things. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 12 Champion! You might have answered my next question, but when you talk about your firm, you always use the term "we" but I'd like to.. .will it be you that will be working with us? Sims/ Yes. Champion! Okay. That's for sure. Sims/ Yeah, that's for sure it's me, uh, you know, you guys were very clear that you wanted to know who was going to be working on the search, but it is a, it is a process. I mean, we have... Champion! Oh, of course! Sims/ ;.. we have good support staff that I communicate with daily. Vanderhoef/ Could you talk a little bit about, uh, two things, both have to do with money. One is, the salary scale that you're seeing in comparable cities, comparable, uh, cost of living areas for city manager, and then follow up with just quick run down on your, uh, company charges. Sims/ Urn, for city managers, peop1e...it depends on where they're coming from, to be brutally honest, but typically, you can advertise in the 90's, but a lot of times, especially when a move is involved, people are trying to hit that six-figure mark. Urn, we will not try to give away the store. We will make sure that we talk about the, urn, more, you know, the more cost effective, uh, cost of living, housing, whole nine yards, but urn, you know, that's typically what we see, is people wanting to be in the that range. Some for the larger communities, I mean, we have city manager searches that go, you know, up to $150,000, $160,000. What was your most recent.. .what was the retired city manager? (several talking) You know, that's me, that's what I want, and you know, that doesn't have to be.. .we have to talk about what would be realistic and what's truly comparable in your. . . III your venue. Karr/ It's 8:45...excuse me, Andrea, it's 8:45...just... Sims/ What was it? Karr/ I was just giving the time. Sims/ Oh, I'm sorry! (several talking at once, laughter) Yes, I mean, you have a competitive salary range. I'm sorry, and you said... Vanderhoef/ Can you run down what you charge for basic service, and what, uh, additional.. . This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 13 Sims/ Dh the professional.. .the professional fees, you know, are the 18,500, and then the additional pieces are for the marketing materials, you know, the printer costs, telephone, uh, travel, urn, video conference fees - all those things, and you're direct-billed for what it costs us to do work. We don't, you know, have a markup or anything like that on the work. The printed materials, you know, when we send out the brochure, urn, the books to you. The final books typically cost about $1,000 by the time we, urn, do the, uh, copying of the books. We put together the, uh, criminal, civil background check. We, you know, we contract with Lexus- Nexus and another firm, PSI, to do their criminal, civil background check, uh, DMV, urn, and again, we're not necessarily going to give you all perfect people. We just want to make sure that if they've had a bankruptcy, that we tell you about it. That it's not something that comes out through the newspaper. Urn, ifthey've had, urn, ifthey've had urn, you know, a problem with, uh, urn, they've changed the.. . drunk driving, I can't think of it. They've changed the acronym in my community so now I can't remember what I was used to calling it, but if they've had a drunk driving arrest, something like that, we want to make sure that you're aware of it. Uh, won't necessarily be a show stopper, but again, we believe that we should tell you about these things versus it coming out in that fashion. O'DonnelV Bob, don't they call it an OMVI now? Elliott! It used to be OMVI, not it's OWL Sims/ Yeah, and it confuses me. I just.. . you know, I was used to certain acronyms and I get confused easily. Vanderhoef! If you were to estimate... Wilburn! I'm sorry. We're coming up on the,. . and I wanted to give you an opportunity to ask a question of us. Sims/ Sure. Wilburn! (unable to hear) Sims/ Yeah, typically it's about 10,000 in those fees, but they can be (unable to hear). Wilburn! Any questions of us? Sims/ Urn, well I think I already mentioned the question about the most pressing community issues from you all's viewpoint that I may have been aware of. Wilburn! Uh, recently, uh, I don't want to.. .this'll sound a little insensitive framing it this way, but the flavor of the moment, I guess, is, uh, urn, some sexual assaults going on. We recently had some, urn, arson. We do have the, just so you get a sense of the community thing, there's a concern.. . our campus security are not armed, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 14 They're their own separate force, uh, but there is a collaboration between the units, but uh, it's the recommendation going up with, uh, from the University President about that. Some budgetary things we're, uh, fiscally sound. We have a trip1e-A bond rating. Uh, we are trying to look at some basic infrastructure stuff like, uh, getting our fourth fire station staffed, uh, perhaps some increase in police numbers. Anybody else want to... Champion! Oh, I think that's the major one. I think that will take care of itself in the next three or four years though. I think we have some TIP's coming off that we'll gain some money. Wilburn! Yeah, there's some, uh, tax increment financing process that we have used, uh, there's some...it is a tension in the community about what's appropriate and what's not appropriate. Those are some of the types of things. Bailey/ We'll be digging in and looking at an affordable housing study, that's an on- going, as you well expected, but it's an on-going concern. We have consultants who are preparing, I think, the final draft of that. And I think that that will be a big community issue in the upcoming year. Vanderhoef! And binge drinking is...is a big one throughout the community. And we are truly constrained by State law on, uh, General Fund taxation. (several talking) Wilburn! Oh, there's a couple items that are going to be on referendum. One is, uh, whether or not there should be an ordinance requiring people to be 21 to get into the bars, and then, uh, there's a referendum about whether or not our Police Citizens Review Board should be included in the Charter, and if they should have power of subpoena. Bai1ey/ So those issues will clearly be decided. It's going to be how to manage the results of that. O'Donnell! Well, and I think it's clear also that the community wants to continue to grow the tax base, and we have to continue to keep active. Wilburn! But bottom line, since we.. . you referred that we had a city manager here for 21 years, and uh, you know, everyone's watching and anxious, wants to make sure that we've got, you know, a high-quality person. Uh, possibility that we may have an in-house candidate, that's possible. Sims/ The Interim? Wilburn! What's that? Sims/ The Interim? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 15 Wilburn! Yes, uh-huh, yeah. Well, thank you very much. Sims/ Thank you for the opportunity. I hope to get a chance to work with you all, and if I don't, I wish you all the best. Urn, timing wise for the decision? Wilburn! Urn, my hope for the.. . for the, and I think our hope, is that we're able to walk out of here today. We're doing the interviews.. .the last one is scheduled at... Karr/ 11 :00. Wilburn! .. .11 :00.. . and we're going to have a conversation after that, uh, urn. I would like for us to be able to, urn, urn, pick one to begin negotiating a contract with, and if we're able to successfully negotiate, then urn, you know, it would come back to the Council to. . . Karr/ Next regularly scheduled meeting, October 2nd. Wilburn! .. . October 2nd would be us finalizing, but we're hoping to give direction to staff to start negotiating after today. Champion! We will! Wilburn! Connie says we will, so we will! (laughter and several talking at once) Well, thank you again very much. Vanderhoef/ Thank you, Andrea. Sims/ I appreciate the opportunity. Karr/ Ross, do you wish to break after each one? Ijust... Wilburn! Why don't we break after each one. (several talking) As you're getting settled, I assume you're Mr. Slavin? Slavin! I'm Bob Slavin, that's right. Wilburn! Okay, I'm Ross Wilburn, Mayor of Iowa City, and what we will be doing today is just a quick introduction. I'll give the Council Members a chance to introduce them.. .introduce themselves. Uh, we'll hear your presentation and then Council, each Council Member will take a turn asking a question, if they chose, to make sure we give everybody an opportunity, and then we'll open it up for questions and give you a chance to ask a question or two of us at the end. Slavin! Terrific, appreciate it. Wilburn! So, I guess we started with Amy so we'll start with Bob this time. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 16 Elliott! I'm Bob Elliott. I'm the lame duck on the Council. Slavin! You look perfectly healthy to me! Champion! He's not! (laughter) Bai1ey/ No, he's not. Vanderhoef! Hi, Bob, it's nice to see you again! Slavin! Hi, Dee. How are ya? (laughter) V olland/ I'm Abbie Volland. I'm with the University of Iowa. I'm the City Council Liaison. Slavin! Nice to meet you, Abbie. V olland/ Nice to meet you. Champion! Connie Champion, O'Donnell! Mike O'Donnell. Slavin! I'm sorry? O'Donnell! Mike O'Donnell. Slavin! Michael. I've got your pictures in front of me. I should be able to figure that out! (laughter) Bailey/ Regenia Bailey. Slavin! Regenia. Bailey/ I'm the Mayor Pro Tern. Correia! Amy Correia. Wilburn! And you've already met Sylvia. We've got, urn, our City Attorney Eleanor Di1kes, and our City Clerk Marian Karr with us. Slavin! .. .meet you, thank you. Wilburn! And please make sure you use the microphone so we get it all. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 17 Slavin! Thank you...I would not have thought to do that, but I was.. . Sylvia told me to do that so.. . yeah. Urn, let me make a.. .I'm Bob Slavin. I'm President of our company which is Slavin Management Consultants. Let me make a quick introduction so that you know who's with me. Maybe some of you know him, Paul Wenbert. Paul works for us out of Mesa, Arizona and runs our western regional activities. Urn, he is here because he has very close ties to Iowa. He's been President of the, of the City Management Association here. He's, uh, been City Administrator in Newton, and he, God forbid, I have to say this today, he was an Assistant City Manager in Ames for a while. (laughter) So... Champion! You'll have to leave right now! Slavin! (laughter) Yeah, 1.. . we were talking about the timing of this, but we can't hide that, so, but he does have strong ties to this state, and a lot of colleagues here, so I thought he would add great value to this process. I have got an outline of what I'm going to do and I'll.. .urn, it's.. ,the value of it is whatever you want it to be, but it keeps me kind of focused, I'm going to be brief, because I think the most important part of what we're going to do is Q and A. Urn, Slavin Management Consultants is, was formed in 1991, uh, to do executive recruiting for local governments. My experience in this business goes back to 1990.. .1979, in which I, at which time I left, uh, a position as Assistant City Manager for a community in California, and began to work for Korn/Ferry International. At that time, Korn/Ferry and the PAR Group out of Chicago were the two, urn, companies in the country that did, uh, national scoped local government recruiting. We were the only two, so urn, and of that, I guess I'm dating myself, but of the group of people who were involved in that at the time, I'm the only one who's still active. Unfortunately Paul isn't alive, and was an outstanding guy, and my former bosses have retired, so.. ,urn, that leaves me with, I guess, the distinction of being the longest tenured local government executive recruiter in the United States, for whatever value that is. Uh, the, uh, our home office is in Norcross, Georgia. We've worked in every state in the Union, actually, we have worked in 50, or 49 states, but we've done recruiting in, urn, probably, I wanted to say...I was going to say 48 because we haven't done anything in the two Dakotas, but I think there's probably one or two others that we haven't recruited in. So, urn, but we have done other types of work. We have affiliates in Dallas, Hartford, Connecticut, and Mesa. And those affiliates, when they do search work at least, they work, where the.. .they only work for us. It's not a case where., . and each of those cases, people in those offices will do other types of work on their own, but when it's recruiting, it's us. So, urn, I have, uh, a lot of experience in this business. I've, uh, conducted more than 600 searches over the years, many of them city managers, county administrators, a lot of them department heads. In Iowa, I can't tell you we have a huge amount of experience, but we have, uh, quite a bit. We placed a finance director in Davenport, not a city administrator, but a finance director a few years ago. We placed the present City Manager in Muscatine, We placed a city manager, not the current one, in Sioux City, and the present one in West Des Moines. The other thing I thought might be interesting This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 18 to you because of the unique characteristics of university towns, we have a lot of experience in working with, 00, communities that have major universities, including Ann Arbor; Berkley, California; Columbia, Missouri; Evanston, Illinois; Fort Collins, Colorado; Gainesville, Florida; Kalamazoo, Michigan; Laramie, Wyoming; Oberlin, Ohio; Springfield, Missouri; Ipsalanti, Michigan; and others. Urn, summary of, summarize the project, the scope of services, urn, and seeing these five bullet points make a lot of work seem real easy, but the first phase is the development of a recruitment profile, and that is more than just a piece of paper in our minds. It is a, a document that you folks craft with our help, and as a result of two or three days of intense work with you people, as individuals and maybe you collectively, we come here and we find out what it is about this community that separates it and makes it distinct and unique. A lot of that information is available just from common knowledge and from looking at your web site, and you know, basically our knowledge ofIowa City. However, it's dangerous to think that just because we know something about Iowa City that we know what your interests are and what you're looking for at this point in time. Had we done this work before, coming here with the assumptions based on that work, and applying them to 2007 would be a mistake. We've learned that over the years. You're the Council; you're our boss. We focus on what your thoughts are and what your needs are, and we need to capture those, so that's why we want to talk with you each as individuals and then collectively, and in addition to that, we would want to talk to whoever else you may wish for us to. We would suggest that you allow us to talk with some of your staff folks. They're in this building five days a week, eight hours a day, and they know a lot about what's going on that maybe you don't, and they can give us some very valuable insight. Uh, frequently we're asked to talk with community leaders, and that was part of what you asked us to respond to in the qualifications statement. We've done that in a lot of ways. That's your call, whether you want us to do it at all is your call, and how you want us to do it - we can guide with some suggestions and some cautions, but 00, we'll do that in response to, urn, to your direction, not ours, but we frequently do that. Urn, we, um, once we have the profile we take it to the, urn, to the marketplace, if you will, and we very specifically focus on what that profile contains, in our effort to identify and recruit candidates. Urn, in the first few weeks of the process is just doing that, and it's doing it through a variety of sources, or techniques. Some of them, urn, targeted specifically at your goal, some of them more general in nature, which that part of it would include advertising, but the targeted is actually getting on the phone, looking at other communities that have characteristics similar to yours, looking at places that have achieved things that are on your list of things you want to accomplish, and trying to figure out who was at the helm of those organizations at the time that those accomplishments were made, and then we identify them and contact them and whether or not they're interested, I guess, is up to them, but at least ifthey're not they may know others who have or they may be able to tell us who is, who on their staff, or were working with them on those projects or who might have been on their staff and left and been someplace else, so at any rate, it's kind of a process of trying again to tie what you're looking for to, 00, what we're looking This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 19 for on your behalf. Urn, so, then we evaluate candidates, and initially if's a preliminary evaluation. It's resume review, it's telephone interviews, it's getting supplemental information from them using maybe a questionnaire that is tied, again, to your criteria. Uh, we look at all ofthat, and urn, uh, then we report, at that point to you folks our findings, and who.. . and will tell you who we think are the, urn, are the urn, most likely prospects for this job, and we'll bring with us more opportunity, more candidates than you'll ever see most likely, but then as a result of that meeting, which, uh, uh, will take place again when we have the group screened, to those that meet the criteria, but not to the finalists group, and with your, as a result of the information exchange at that meeting, we'll narrow the group a little bit. Again, we'll actually then do.. .the background work that's most comprehensive. Urn, w.e'll do on-site visits. We'll interview them on-site. We do, uh, credit, criminal, driving, uh, uh, education checks. We check newspaper clippings. We go at least ten years, at least three jobs. We do referencing. Urn, we, urn, uh, basically try to look at these people from all different facets of their professional life, and to the extent that it's pertinent, their personal lives. So, what.. .basically obviously the guarantee that when you have a group of four or five or six people that you interview, that they basically have checked out, and that you can then address your interests and your, and look at them in terms of who you really want to have work for you, without having to worry about whether or not there's something in their background that, uh, that you need to know in order to make an intelligent decision or about them, so urn, then once we have that group narrowed down, and the background work done, we present them to you. Four, five, six - we'll work with you to determine how you want those interviews to take place. We'll be here with you for.. . for that. Sometimes that's the point in which there's some community involvement. We'll work with you on that. We'll work with you to determine what you want to do about spouses. That's critical, because if you want somebody to take ajob, their spouse probably better be here, and have seen the place. We'll, uh, help you with the interview process, or processes. Sometimes it's a multiple set of interviews. We'll uh, help you narrow the group, make a selection, uh, we'll work with you probably the Mayor and the Attorney. That's kind of typical, to do, urn, negotiations. Uh, for and work out at least the terms and conditions that will be in an employment agreement. Urn, we'll urn, urn, it's basically a soup to nuts process, After the person is selected and hired, we'll suggest very strongly to you that we come back 30, 40, 50 days later and help you establish some performance goals, Not city goals, but performance goals - things you expect that manager to accomplish within the first year, 18 months of employment. That's very helpful to the manager, and it's also very helpful to you because it keeps you focused on what the person's doing, let's them know what you expect of he or she, and how they're going to be evaluated. So we'll help you do that, and we stay with you throughout the first at least two years of a person's employment, because we guarantee that if anything for any reason, a person isn't on the job within two years of the time that they begin, we'll redo this. So, urn, I don't know whether you want to talk about cost or not, but I'll, urn, that was not asked for in the, in the original qualifications statement, but I'll be happy to respond to that if you want This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 20 to. Sometimes it's purposely, it's a subject that you want to wait and hear everybody talk about, but if you.. .1'11 be happy to talk to you about it if you want to. So, I'm going to be quiet and let you, 00, ask questions, Wilbum/ Okay. Why don't we start with Regenia, start on this side. And I'll remind Council Members. . . Bailey/ I didn't expect to start, so start somewhere else, please. Wilbum/ Okay. I was going to say, you can also pass this first go-around. So.. .Mike? O'Donnell! I don't have any questions. Slavin! Thank you. Wilbum/ Connie? Champion! I really like the idea of how you're so willing to involve the staff and community, urn, with interviews of the final candidates, and how do you keep the community and staff from deciding who they want? Because it might not be who I want. Slavin! That's exactly the reason that we'll work with you to determine that. You need to stay in control of this. Uh, it would be my very strong advice that if YDU involve staff and community, that you allow nobody to rank or rate but yourselves. However, uh, that doesn't mean that their input wouldn't be valuable, and that you wouldn't have an opportunity to, uh, evaluate it, but I would suggest that something, like with staff, urn, maybe a luncheon while the candidates are in town, or you assign staff members to be their, to be a candidate liaison, escort them around town. Uh, but probably there ought to be an opportunity for all of them to be in the same room at the same time. Uh, and then with the community, what works in a lot of places is a meet-and-greet, urn, kind of a community reception, urn, in which candidates, maybe their spouses, 00, at this point, although 1'11 caution you to keep, uh, names confidential up until a point that people come here for interview - once they're here, uh, then, urn, I would suggest that at that point names are available, and the media has them, and 1'11 work with you in terms of how to release them, and then maybe a meet-and-greet. Again, nobody ranking, nobody rating anybody, but you should then allow enough time for people to, to get their comments and thoughts back to you before you make a decision, and that way you stay in control. Correia! I have a quick follow up, can Ijust.. .so how in those, a meet-and-greet or a luncheon with staff, what do you, what in your experiences in the process of how that, their thoughts get to the Council, and what process would that be? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 21 Slavin! Well, it's usually pretty informal. That you, basically you let everybody who you've invited into the process, or if it's the entire community, know that you want their responses, either by email or phone or however they want to provide them to you, and that you plan on making a decision as of a date certain. Correia! So it's not like a facilitated... Slavin! No. It could be. Correia! .. .one day. Slavin! It could be, but if you go into this facilitated thing, then you're probably going to run into exactly the issue that the Council Member was suggesting that you may want to avoid, and that is losing control of it, or frustrating, urn, the people you've involved by not choosing the person they want. V olland/ My question is, will you specifically be working with us, or. . , Slavin! Yes. Paul and I will be working together, but I.. . formed this company from a, as kind of a, , .in a, resulting from a fairly painful, urn, separation from another company, because I wanted to do search work. The choice I had was to stay in that company and run a, a search division and never do the work myself, or to do it myself, and uh, if that was the case I needed to change companies, so that's why I did it, and that's.. . and that's why I left my job as an Assistant City Manager because I wanted to do this, and I've done, I've made several changes - probably not in my best financial interest, but because it's what I have a passion for. So, that doesn't mean Paul won't be here and you won't see him, but it does mean that you will see me too -lots! Wilburn! Can you provide some more details, specifics on how you go about recruiting a diverse candidate pool, and any challenges you might face here in Iowa City? Slavin! Well, in terms of challenges here, I don't know, uh, except that most communities that have major universities, uh, have already comforted the potential candidates in the sense that they're probably going to be okay, Uh, sometimes there's some real concern about whether a minority would be accepted. I don't think that'll be the case here - I hope not. Urn, we use several mechanisms for doing that. First of all, we've been around a long time, we know where people are. Urn, I'm a member of the National Forum for Black Public Administrators, uh, and have their directories and know who's where and what they do and., . and uh, and so that helps, There are several publications that, urn, urn, specifically are.. . are, urn, distributed to people who are women and minorities, not just African-Americans but Asians and Hispanics and so we use those. The ICMA has a publication that, uh, called JOBS, which is a subscription publication but it, it goes primarily... the purpose of it is to, urn, is to alert minorities and women to opportunities in this industry. And it is a joint effort between them and the National Forum for Black This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 22 Public Administrators, so there's several ways of doing it, and again, I think.. . guess the most important thing is that, uh, you have an interest in doing that, and if you do, we'll do it, and I don't know whether you saw our list of, urn, minority and women placements, but over the years it is at least 25% of what, of our placements and probably more, and that list continues to grow. It isn't complete. Wilburn! Dee? Vanderhoef/ Urn, Bob, could you talk a little bit about the marketplace for city managers, and what the challenges might be (unable to hear) come up against? Slavin! Little different than for the League, thankfully. Urn, but there are some, urn, some issues there too. The marketplace is the entire nation. Urn, the, urn, and most council-manager governments have city managers. That doesn't mean that they're all interested in moving. The, urn, but the universe of potential candidates is, is good. The, urn, problem that we're facing is that there is a bubble of, urn, or lack of candidates in this field, lack of people in this business, from about age 49 to 50, 51, 52, which are people in their prime, otherwise people who would be the kind of people we might target. So what you're getting is an older group, and some younger ones, but there is a, a, uh, just a, I don't know why except that, uh, lots oftheories have been suggested as to why.. .the schools of public administration have been concerned about it. ICMA's been concerned about it. It's just a phenomenon. Baby Boomers are retiring. The a.. .there's a vacuurn between those folks and the next generation, so you'll probably get an older group. Urn, having said what Ijust did, we haven't lacked for quality. We've lacked for quantity. So, this city ought to draw. You've got several things that, uh, will attract people. People who like university towns will be very attracted to it. You have a very stable history here with Steve having been here for 20 or more years. Urn, he's.. .the City's got a good reputation. You've got, uh, urn, I was reading last night on the plane, or reminding myself at least, of some of the attributes ofthis community. Urn, maybe the oppor. . . the challenge will be to get the word out to people who may not know it, uh, but, uh, I think it'll sell. Bailey/ May I ask a follow up question, please? Wilburn! Yeah, go ahead. Bailey/ Urn, are there other fields or sectors that, uh, have transferable skills and you might look elsewhere, as well, I mean, given whatever profile we develop? Slavin! Uh, that's the key. The, uh, accounting certainly. Urn, people who have been in the business who left to do other things. The only thing that, urn, thought that comes to mind when you ask that question is, uh, you need to be sure that the person is capable of working in this kind of an environment, which is a, you know, you've got a community that elects a board through a political process, and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 23 a, and that board is collectively sets policy for the community, and uh, that's the group that the manager needs to be responsive to, and then in addition to that, needs to get services provided to a community, and that can be kind of tough. If you come out of a private sector environment, even if you're a CEO, uh, you're dealing with a board that you probably never see. You're given a mission to make money, and uh, urn, if you don't do that you fail, but you can, you have a lot of discretion within that guideline, uh, to urn, to work, and so sometimes it's very difficult to, urn, take that experience, even though you're working for a board which might be a city, which might be equivalent in some folks' mind to a city council, and you are in essence the CEO, the City Manager, and you do have a staff, it's different. So, I would make sure that wherever, whatever field that be, that there be enough experience in that person's background that's analogous to this to be able to make an intelligent decision as to whether you think that those skills are transferable. So, I don't know. I've seen people come into this business from the military, but usually at the Deputy level, because, and maybe.. .there are people running military bases, and if you look at a military base, they've got roads, they've got fire, they've got police, they've got. . .lot of times parks and a lot of the same attributes and problems are issues and opportunities that you folks have, but they've never, those people have never worked for a city council, and they have never had to face the constituent at a council meeting. So, maybe the best place for them to come into an organization, and where I've found it successful is as an assistant, and then in three or four years move up. But, I'd be interested in talking to you about that if you've got some thoughts. We did a search one time where a member of the council said, I want.. . she wanted somebody who had never been in city government, and a woman. Urn, unfortunately the council changed completely between the time that we started and the time that we finished, and she was, she remained, and she asked, well, where are the women that have not been in the business. Well, none of the rest of the members of the council wanted that, urn, and I still don't know to this day know exactly what was on her mind, uh, but, urn, you know, we'll work with you on it. Private sector, urn, people coming into the business are most successful if they've had at some point in their lives some public sector experience. Champion! I like the part though where their job is to make money. CEO's.. . (several talking). Elliott/ I have a two-part question, uh, on this. First of all, it's my belief that usually the best candidates, best prospects, aren't looking, aren't actively looking for ajob. First question is, how do you convince us that you don't just take applications. You have the contacts. You make the contacts. You know the people. You know where to get them. Second one, is when you're interviewing, obviously knowledge, skills, and abilities are important for any job, but particularly for ajob like City Manager, the intangibles, and you mentioned in your proposal management style and personal traits are very important, so tell me what kind of emphasis you put on that in your, 00, evaluation process. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 24 Slavin! Thank you. Well, again, the profile and the criteria is established by you folks, but once we have it, we do everything we can to find people who meet it. We do advertise, and the advertising is often productive, so I'm not going to, uh, to try, urn, to convince you that that's just a waste oftime. When we did private sector search work when I worked for Korn/Ferry, I did mostly public, but when we did private sector, we never advertised, and urn, even, we'd tell our clients - er, I wouldn't - but my bosses would, that that's not how you get good people because good people are not looking. Well, there may be some good people who aren't looking but they'll see an ad in ICMA and they'll say Iowa City, that's...I have some family, or I have, I went to the University of Iowa, I'd love to manage that city, and they are looking for Iowa City, but they're not looking for anything else. So we'll bring that to their attention. In addition to that, we spend a lot of time who might meet the criteria, talking to people in comparable positions to this - may not, they may not be interested, but we'll ask them who they know. We'll go through our database to find people who've applied for similar jobs, or for city manager jobs that might be ideal for this but weren't right for that, uh, so we'll do that. Urn, we do know people all over the United States, and uh, Paul's been on the ICMA board, uh, so we'll use his contacts too. And it is, uh, usually the group that you'll ultimately.. . certainly the group that I'll present to you at the progress meeting will be a mixture of.. .people come to us from a mixture of different, urn, mechanisms. We use Rifle and we use Shotgun. The Rifle is the most important thing we do, but I'll tell you, for every ten calls we make, if we get one return call, and that doesn't necessarily mean a candidate, that's the batting average. So, it's, you have to do a lot of things. The, urn, second part of your question was how do we get, how do we assess the intangibles? Urn, people, I don't know that they believe that we actually do on-site visits, but we do, and we are, when we go there, we want to see the. . . we want to see them, if we can, in their work environment. We want to, nobody knows why we're trailing, or tailing or.. .this person. We usually, urn, are introduced as consultants, urn, and we are looking at a lot of things. When you, you walk into a, urn, public works department unannounced with the boss, it's kind of interesting to watch what happens. What we're thinking about is what you've said you're looking for in terms of style, but what.. . and when we walk into that room with the person, we're looking at how the staff reacts to them, have they ever seen the person before, or do they come to attention, do they look petrified, is there a professional response to them? We'll want to walk down Main Street with them, see who they know, whether., ,quite often with a successful city manager you can't get two feet without having to stop, but that's usually good. But again, we're trying to assess whether the dialogue is friendly or whether it's hostile or whether.. . you know, a.i1d that's one of the most important things we do to, and then to.. . first hand at least to assess how they relate to people, and then we ask a lot of people in our referencing, how they respond and how they work with folks, what the relationships have been with their elected officials, with the community, with community leaders. Are they ever seen out in the community? Uh, do they, urn, how do they manage their staff, what kind of leadership skills do they have, and again, I think one of the values of using a firm, either mine or another, that have people that have been This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 25 around a long time - we know people who are there, and we know people who have been there and have gone, and we don't just reference people with the people who are on the reference list - we go beyond that. So, urn, and nothing's perfect. So I'll tell you that our batting average is usually very high, in terms of successful placements, uh, much higher than.. . our placements, urn, tenure is far higher than the national average, urn, been a time or two when we wish we could have done it a little differently, but that happens very seldom. Wilburn! I wanted to follow up on a question that Dee asked about, uh, essentially marketplace, because 1. . .I want to make sure I heard you correctly, and if you could elaborate on it. I thought you said, uh, in her question about the marketplace, you said a little different than the League search, thankfully,.. Slavin! Oh, yeah. Wilburn! .. . and can you elaborate? Slavin! Yes, I can. Urn, the League is, there are. . . we have some, the criteria we have for the League is to find people who have run, or who have been Deputies in, urn, municipa11eagues or county associations. There are 49 municipal leagues in the country, and some of the, and I don't remember exactly how many comparable, urn, county associations. We've contacted every single one of them, and we are going back to contact, urn, people at the next lower level right now. What we initially generated was a list of people who look qualified, but not a lot of them, and urn, I don't know whether Dee shared this with you or not, but the idea was to do some preliminary exploration of four or five people who we thought would, may meet the criteria and be acceptable to the Steering Committee, and in doing, and that was our goal. A day before those meetings, or those.. .the meeting between me and the Steering Committee took place, two people withdrew, and they were two that we had the most interest in. One of them withdrew because, urn, I'm not even sure why, urn, he was on vacation, and 1.. .he withdrew. Urn, and was not going to be able to be available to us in an easy way. The other one withdrew because the word got out that he was interested, and he had to do damage control with his present employer, and urn, he, urn, spent the time dong that, so uh, so we ended up with three. Two ofthose folks were, if I'm right, were acceptable, One of them probably wasn't, and the Committee asked me to find two or three more. So that's... Wenbert! Yeah, Paul Wenbert, I just want to elaborate on that a second. Urn, when Bob and I were talking about, and I helped him with the League search too, but when we started talking about this job, and I said this would be fun. First off, you got a city manager who's been here 21 years, That just doesn't happen very often, and it's a tremendous selling point. Urn, I need to back up I guess. I've been in the profession for 30 years, in city government, and I was a City Manager for 13 years. As Bob said, I was on the leMA board, so I know people all over the country. The other thing you've got going for you, besides the University town, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 26 is that this is actually a fairly large council-manager government, over 60,000 population, and the size of your budget, the number of employees, so you're going to have a lot of upwardly mobile people who are going to be looking at Iowa City, and this is going to be attractive to them. So, yeah, bottom line is, um, the League search just by its nature is a much-more limited pool. For a well- known city where you've had a city manager who's been here for over 20 years, it's just a much bigger pool of people. So, uh, I think that's the bottom line. Slavin! Just another comment, on that, we're working on some leads for that now that hopefully will be productive. If they're not, again, we'll just have to sit down and talk with the Committee about where else we have to go, because, I mean, we can't create people, We can only find them, and the ones that we want have basically said they're about to retire or they just took the job or they're not going to move. So... Wilburn! Open up anyone on Council with questions. Correia! What would you say are the unique issues for communities that have the university community? Slavin! Urn, a very active community, as a rule. Uh, a lot of, uh, ofum, different groups in the community that are invited to participate in the, in the policy making process, and in the life of the community it's encouraged, it's valued, it's, urn, it's.. . and it does add value in my opinion to the life ofthe community, but it also challenges. You've got a person needs to come in and, City Manager needs to be prepared to, and actually willing to celebrate that, urn, that's primarily it. The, um, it takes longer to make decisions. Also, because of the number of varied interests in the community, there's a.. .various demands on limited resources that, uh, you might not have in a community that doesn't have that kind of active community. So, maybe a little easier for a council to make a decision is, as to how to allocate resources, when in fact, urn, you don't have the community at the meetings challenging you to...to do this or that. So... Wilburn! What guidelines do you recommend to a council, typically, that is looking for a participatory process with the public? Slavin! Urn, basically, stay in control. My thoughts would be to include, urn, folks at the beginning of the process when it comes, at the part of the process where we're putting the profile together, Uh, and then at the end of the process maybe a meet- and-greet and have some ofthose same people there. If they're involved in the, urn, meeting with us in terms of, and trying to help you define what your needs are, and then they have an opportunity to see the candidates at the end, they can kind of correlate what they've contributed to what, uh, you have, and tell you that, you know, base their comments to you on that. Uh, we've done a, done that a lot of different ways, that initial involvement. We've done charettes. We've done, I've done, one community, it wasn't a college community, it was Richmond, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 27 California. I wrote a questionnaire that was published in the local paper to the community and asked, uh, community to respond. I can't remember if it was to me or to the city, but uh, we asked specific questions. Sometimes it's focus groups, other times it's just peop1e...in Evanston I sat in a, 00, city hall for, I think it was three days, and people could come in and sign up and talk with me. And urn, and it was well publicized that I would be there, and I, it was 8:00 in the morning until 9:00 at night sometimes, 00, and at 20 minute intervals, there were some gaps but not many. So.. .urn, it was actually fun, but I tell you it was exhausting, but it was fun. Champion! I have another question on that, because I don't picture a meet-and-greet. I picture a group of citizens that we select, maybe each of us. . .let's just say each of us gives two names to Ross of citizens that we'd like. to be on this committee. I don't envision the whole town. I mean, they could come meet-and-greet after our selection, but I picture this group of staff, and this group of citizens, asking the candidates questions. Slavin! Yeah, we've done that too. Urn, actually, we've done it in a couple of ways. Again, I guess I don't want to.. .I'm good at hearing my own echo. You need t stay in control of it, so... but the, and not frustrate the people you want to participate in the process. One ofthe ways we've done that is you know the group, if you interview five or six, you narrow it to three or four, there are people you really have an interest in, and then, I've sat here and,. . council members up there, and, 00, community leaders actually coming in and asking the candidates questions. I guess the candidates have sat up there, two or three ofthem, at the, responding to the same questions. Urn, and then there wasn't.. .we've done that in a couple places - Durham and 00, and most recently Northland, Colorado, where they could ask anything they want, with the exception that somebody did screen those questions to make sure they were legal, but I don't think we eliminated any of them. In Northland, we sat there from 1 :00, and we thought it would be an hour and a half, but from 1 :00 until 5:00 with people asking questions. Champion! So you have dealt with those kind of. , , Slavin! Yes. Wilburn! (several talking) I'm sorry, I think Dee had one last... Vanderhoef/ Uh, why don't you run through a little bit about the cost for a search for us. Slavin! Sure. Bai1ey/ And then my question tags along, how many trips, how frequently would we expect to see you? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 28 Slavin! Okay. Urn, the, urn, cost is around a little less than $14,000 in fees, plus expenses, which we kept at 55% ofthat, and if we don't spend it you don't pay it. If we spend more to meet your, uh, the scope of services in the proposal, then you don't know about that. So, it runs around $22,000. The, urn, total could be that high, could be less. The.. .but it won't be more. That does not include the cost for bringing candidates to you, but it includes everything else. The, uh, it's planned that we'll be here three times, urn, I shouldn't say this out loud.. . Evanston I was there five or six times. And, I never said to them you've got to pay me to do this. So.. . (laughter) Elliott! Bob, you spent some time with Korn/Ferry, which is probably the best known of all the search firms. Slavin! Yes, sir. Elliott! Why is your smaller firm better? Slavin! Because we do government work. Uh, let me explain that more carefully. When we did, uh, I don't.. .my former boss, urn, coerced Dick Ferry into having a public sector practice, and the reason for it wasn't necessarily to make money, but it was because so much of what we do in the public sector makes the newspapers, and I guess that on the theory that there's no bad publicity or no bad marketing, uh, we did that. And, you know, when we do Dallas, Texas we're in the Dallas Morning News, and.. .that's why they supported it, but.. .uh, I went there because I wanted to do governmental search. My background was 12 years in city and county management, so urn, although I did a lot of private sector work when I was there, my first love was government. Uh, they took a position that we were discount search.. .at the time KornlFerry was charging a third of the first year's total compensation, and fees, and they would audit at the end of the year to make sure that they captured all bonuses or whatever it is that might have been paid during that first year. We charged at probably $8,500 at the time and expenses capped, so we were.. . and we were doing more work. We.. .these governmental searches are far more extensive in terms of labor intensive than the private sector. Urn, I'm crazy. I want to do this work. I think it does make a difference. Urn, and as much as I appreciated the opportunity at KornlFerry and we did good work there, I couldn't care less who's the attorney running a metals commodity trading company. (laughter) I did place one there who's still there. That's fine, (laughter) Wilburn! I want to make sure...if Council doesn't have any other questions, I want to make sure they have an opportunity to ask questions of us. Anyone else? Any questions of us? Slavin! Okay, I'll let you do that. I don't have a lot of questions. We did a lot of background work. I understand that you're going to make a decision, you're interviewing four people, and that, uh, urn, you'll make a decision and I want to This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 29 tell you that we're interested in doing this work. It's something that we've kind of, Paul and I have been talking about for a long time and kind of had our fingers crossed that we'd get the opportunity to be here, and fingers are even tighter crossed that we did a good job today and that you'll consider us. We would love to do it, and appreciate the opportunity. Paul? Wenbert! Just a little segway to that, mentioned the trips here and I've got an extra incentive to make trips here because I have one grandchild who lives in Cedar Rapids, and I'm going to see for the first time - she's four months old. Uh, so, urn, I'd like to come back and her and my son and his wife more often, urn, my roots in Iowa go very deep. I have a lot of colleagues and family here, so anyway, I can be talked into extra trips here pretty easily. (laughter) Elliott! Are you in Norcross also, Paul? Wenbert! No, I'm in Mesa, Arizona. I retired from the City of Mesa and work as an affiliate with Bob. Vanderhoef! So you know Keeno? Wenbert! Yeah, sure, absolutely! (unable to hear) Wilburn! Well, we want to thank you very much for taking the time to respond to our RFQ and the time that you spent with us today. Urn, we will, urn, be making a decision on who to try and contract with, but again, we appreciate. Slavin! Your Honor, Members of the Council, thank you very much. Have a great day. (several talking and laughing) Karr/ Break? Wilburn! Break. (pause for break) (several talking) Dick, Ross Wilburn, Mayor ofIowa City. Want to thank you for joining us this morning, and urn, just want to explain what we're going to walk through today. We'll start with.. . give Council Members a chance to introduce themselves, and then we will hear your presentation, and Council will have one round, ask a question each. . .just make sure everybody gets to ask a question, and then just open it up for general questions or follow up questions, as well, for the Council, and then we'll save time at the end for you to ask a question of us. Uh, you've already met Sylvia. We've Eleanor Di1kes our City Attorney, and Marian Karr our City Clerk with us, as well. Urn, so Bob, you want to start with the introduction? Kobayaski/ Can Ijust ask a procedural question? Wilburn! Oh, sure, go ahead! This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 30 Kobayaski/ I noticed that everybody's mic'd...is this a recorded session? (several responding) Okay, so that's the normal procedure. Wilburn! Yes. Kobayaski/ Okay. I'll make sure I talk into the microphone. Wilburn! Yes, talk into the microphone, thank you. Elliott! Marian is not a pilot. She's just monitoring. (laughter) I'm Bob Elliott (several talking at once, laughter) Kobayaski/ Could I just ask one thing on the introductions, and I'll do the same thing myself? Wilburn! Sure. Kobayaski/ As we go around, if you could just say a word or two about how long you've been on the Council and what you might do in civilian life. That helps me understand who I'm having a conversation with. Wilburn! Very good. Elliott! As I said, I'm Bob Elliott. I'm retired. I'm a lame duck on the Council. I'll be done at the end of the year, and I plan to have fun after that! (laughter) Vanderhoef! I'm Dee Vanderhoef. I'm in my lih year, 00, and running for re-election. Uh, and welcome. Kobayaski/ Thank you. Are you going to make a career out of this? Vanderhoef/ No, 00, I was a stay-at-home mom and a nurse prior to that. Wilburn! I'm Ross Wilburn. I'm in my 8th year on Council, up for re-election, and in my full-time paying job, anyway, is that I'm Director of a private, non-profit human servIce agency. V olland/ I'm Abbie Volland. I'm with the University of Iowa. I'm the City Council Liaison, and I'm a Masters of Social Work student at the University. Kobayaski/Oh, great! Great! Champion! I'm Connie Champion. I'm in my 10th year, I think. Urn, I have eight children, 14 grandchildren, and I was on the School Board for nine years. That about sums up my life! (laughter) This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 31 O'Donnell! Mike O'Donnell. I'm in my 10th year. Urn, there will not be another term, uh, but I've been an independent businessman for the last 30 years. Bai1ey/ I'm Regenia Bailey. I serve as Mayor Pro Tern on the Council. I'm in my 4th year. I'm running for re-election. In my, urn, day job I'm a consultant for non- profits, an independent consultant to non-profits. Correia! I'm Amy Correia. I'm in my first term, second year on the Council. I have a Masters in Social Work. I work for County government as the Social Services Coordinator for Johnson County. Kobayaski/ Thank you very much. Just by way of the same kind of personal introduction, my name is Dick Kobayaski. I'm a President of Bennett Yarger Associates. Uh, I spent almost 25 years in state and local government in Massachusetts, and got my start working when Michael Dukakis was the Governor. I know he spent a lot oftime in Iowa 20 years ago. I've been here for halfthe day. I haven't seen any Presidential candidates yet. I thought I might. (several talking, laughter) Uh, and then, uh, and then in the mid-90's I became an independent consultant, and uh, and have worked with Bennett Associates for the past ten years, both in the recruitment field and did significant amount of work in the former Soviet Union in the 90's. That's a little bit about me, personally. Why don't I just.. .what I'd like to do is, uh, talk, uh, I'll try to be relatively brief and leave most of the content to the questions and answers. Uh, I guess, uh, Sylvia gave us some direction about, uh, how to focus our remarks and I'll try to stay pretty close to that. Uh, when we start an engagement, our frame of mind is that we are entering into what's essentially a strategic partnership with the Council. We have a lot of experience carrying out recruitments of senior level people for public agencies of all kinds. Our roots are in city government. Dick Bennett who started the firm, uh, came out of the city management profession. We will never know as much about the highly particular needs of Iowa City as the Members of the Council do. We have to rely on the Council, and people you direct us to, uh, to gain that knowledge. So right from the beginning, we envision the relationships as one of partnership, as one of mutuality, as one of collaboration, Uh, at the.. .as an illustration, we...in a very explicit way, uh, would start our search with three questions. These are the questions that we would ask ourselves. We would ask you. We would ask the stakeholders that you direct us to, and the three questions are really quite straight forward. I have them written down; I'll hand them out. Uh, the three questions are, how will you determine a few years from now that your appointment of a city manager was a success? Second question is, what are the critical issues that Iowa City is facing? And the last question is, what type of stakeholder participation in this process does the Council prefer, and desire, and feels is appropriate for the current conditions in Iowa City? Uh, each one of those questions requires some significant discussion and dialogue with the Council- you're our client. Uh, we don't come to the answers to those questions working in a closet. So right at the beginning, uh, we try to gain a, an in-depth understanding of the context that exists here, and the context, uh, that the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 32 Council is working in. Uh.. .we think that the most important part of recruitment consultation is the first part. They're basically three phases here. Uh, and in the first phase, we deal with the three questions. We typically spend time with each Counselor individually, uh, we work out a plan with the Council, uh, to interview and talk with either one-on-one, or in groups, the stakeholders that you identify, uh, Council usually has some feeling that there are certain opinion leaders in the community that ought to have a chance to weigh in on their views and their preferences. Uh, if it's appropriate, we'll also recommend they participate in open town meetings or meetings with, uh, some of your selected constituencies. We don't go into this with a template. We go into it thinking that it's important for you and us to have a dialog about what the work plan and what the consultation system should be. So we have an approach, but a core part ofthe approach is custom tailoring the work to the needs of each of our clients. Uh, and we will spend as much time as you desire in that consultation process. Now, uh, I think that in our proposal you have some documents that look like this. Actually, if you could help me.. . (unable to hear)., ,usually the initial, the initial scoping and discussion and stakeholder consultation, uh, might take somewhere between four and six weeks. It can be done faster, it can be done at a more deliberative pace, but four to six weeks is about the norm. And what we want to produce for you is a document that looks something like this in graphic format, but what's really important here is that the words inside the document represent a highly accurate description of what the Council wants in its next manager, and the kinds of challenges and the kinds of conditions that the new manager will face. If we get that right, then this becomes a very effective marketing document for Iowa City. It draws in interested people, uh, it's a.. .it's a fundamental truth that the best people in a profession have choices about where they work, and we want to make Iowa City look like an attractive choice, Uh, and.. . and having a clear statement, not the picture.. .but the words are really key. Uh, we don't view this as.. .as a Bennett Yarger document. It's very important that this be the City Council's document. Our normal practice is to ask the City Council to approve the document, so it's really the City's. We're really just your professional pencil. Uh, that's the first, that's the first phase. Uh, the second phase is networking and recruiting. Uh, we place ads in all of the normal places that they're placed. Uh, but we are not mere resume collectors. Uh, the best people for a job often are not looking at the help wanted ads. So we engage in a custom networking exercise. At first blush, one of the things that I would think about in doing network, networking and outreach for Iowa City is. ,.is to think about the other cities that are like you, in that they have a city manger system of government and they are home to a large educational institution, and we would, typically we would get on the phone and talk with the city mangers in these municipalities, and one of the questions we might ask is, uh, you've been doing this for seven or ten years, in that period of time have you come across people who you think would be effective managers in the kind of context that you operate in, a university community, a community that's dominated and.. . and exists in a mutual relationship with a large institution. Ifwe thought about that a little bit more, we might come to the conclusion, and this is hypothetical at this time, uh, that really This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 33 what we're dealing with is a situation in which there's a municipality, uh, that operates in concert with a very large institution. Ifwe tease that out a little bit, we might say, well gee, this is really maybe not so different from the relationship that Norfolk, Virginia has with the big U.S. Navy base there, and those two entities have to work together. Uh, they're both perpetuities, the Navy.. ,the Navy is not going to send its jobs to China. It's going to be there forever, Norfolk is going to be there forever, University ofIowa isn't going to move to Mexico, Iowa City isn't going to move there, and so it's a different relationship than the relationship with a major industry, which has.. .has some flexibility about where to move, and the relationship is really one of figuring out how to optimize conditions in the municipality so that the university can grow, the community can grow, the economic base here, uh, can grow. Uh, it's not, uh, it's not.. .it's not, uh, the tug of war kind of relationship that.. . that people find in communities that are dominated by one or two commercial, particularly manufacturing industries. That's... that's.. .we consult with you, but that's the line that I'm thinking would take us toward. Uh, the third stage is we identify candidates, uh, we typically find a dozen candidates that are worthy of serious consideration. We meet with you to review those candidates, and we decide together, uh, who's appropriate to invite for an interview. Uh, we are quite transparent in terms of our work with the Council. Everything we get, all the applications we get, uh, yo.u can see, urn, and then.. .then we proceed to what's typically a three-day interview weekend, prepared by us, and.. . and with some luck, the Council's able to come to a conclusion relatively quickly. One of the questions that comes up is what degree of citizen participation, or citizen involvement is appropriate in. . .in the final interviewing kind of process. We have some general consultation at the beginning, and that's a question.. .there are a variety of techniques that can be used. One ofthe things that's important for us to remember, and for...is that it is a Council responsibility to appoint the manager. It's not a responsibility that can be delegated, You're accountable to the City's. ..the citizens ofIowa City so it's not really a good idea to give away that responsibility, because you're going to be held accountable, but there are techniques that are available, uh, for the Council to get diverse input on the candidates, and we can talk through some ofthose if the Council desires and uh, figure out some kind of custom solution, uh, if. . .ifthe Council is desirous of public comment or public input near the end of the process. The Council may quite probably decide, uh, that that's not a path that it wants to go down, but there are some techniques that we can use that, uh, engender that without.. .without giving away the Council's authority. Uh, one of the questions that, uh, Sylvia asked us to talk about was the question of generating a diverse candidate pool, and I did want to touch on that.. .on that briefly. Uh, we would have a conversation clarifying the.. .what diverse means in this particular context. Typically, it means racial and gender diversity, but sometimes it also mearis, uh, generating a pool which includes people who come from allied fields, not just the city management profession. We would tease that out a bit, at the very beginning, and.. . and orient our networking and requirements, networking efforts to meet your needs. Uh, I do want to mention in specifically that one of my colleagues has just about completed the search for the general manager of BART, the Bay This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 34 Area Rapid Transit system in San Francisco, and he was under an instruction to produce a diverse pool, and there were five finalists, and there were two candidates of color and two women, and one other person, ,.I don't know the details, uh, of that particularly, and you may ask a quite reasonable question - what does BART have to do with the City Council in Iowa City? And, strangely enough, the BART board of directors in California is elected, not appointed. They each represent a district within the.. .within the Bay area so it functions a lot more like a city council, with a defined external constituency, than a typical appointed corporate-like board, Uh, myself, uh, a few years ago, I was very active with the Washington D.C. government, uh, and uh, and we hired some cabinet level people for the District government, including the first commissioner of Child Protective Services in seven years, uh, that particular function had been under federal court receivership, uh, and the Mayor at some political risk was taking it back under the city umbrella and sought our assistance, and.. . given the demographics of the city, uh, the population served was almost entirely African- American. Uh, and we did a diligent nationwide search for a set of candidates and produced a...a quite diverse pool and the city was happy with the outcome. I'd just like to stop right there, and just get into Q and A and be as responsive as I can to your concerns. Wilburn! (several talking) Oh, you can? No, you passed.. .go ahead! Elliott! Me? I'm up.. .can I call you Dick? .. Kobayaski/ Sure. Elliott! Okay, fine. Dick, the proposal said that the project would be, the project manager would be Robert Neher. Is that correct? Kobayaski/ That was... that was the original concept - because of this schedule, uh, as it developed, Robert Neher has an obligation in." Elliott! But you would then be the.., Kobayaski/ I would be the Team Leader. Elliott! Okay. Kobayaski/ He.. .he's working today in Eugene, Oregon on a city manager recruitment, and our feeling is the Council's really want to have the person who makes the presentation be the Team Leader... Elliott! Correct. Kobayaski/ .. .so it got kind of handed off to me. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 35 Elliott/ The other question I had, is you gave us the past seven years, the search activity, and about 20%, only about 20% of it was in the Midwest, and that concerns me a bit, is how well you know the Midwest, which is different than east coast and the west coast and the deep south. Kobayaski/ Well, I can't tell you that I know the Midwest particularly well, at all, except for, uh, reading and the experiences of some of our colleagues, It is an area that Bob Neher has worked in extensively, and the way we work as a collaborative team is...if one of us is a little short on familiarity with a region or technical expertise, uh, we'll call on our colleagues for support. We work in a very collaborative way, so uh, if there are issues here that, uh, that are of special concern, we'll bring in Bob for consultation by telephone, and if we have to bring him here physically, uh, to work with me, uh, to make sure that the Council is comfortable, uh, we will do that. Elliott/ Okay, thank you, Vanderhoef/ Okay, uh, you mentioned Eugene which is a college community. Could you tell me a little bit about working in a college community, looking for city manager. I was specifically interested in seeing that you just did Flagstaff proposal, and how that went, and how.. .how uh, the city manager is settling in? Kobayaski/ In the words of, uh, a friend and colleague who was the city manager for 20 years in Amherst, Massachusetts, home of the University of Massachusetts, uh, the problem with being a city manager in a university town is that no matter what topic you're working on there are at least two people who have written books about it. (laughter) Uh, I mean in a broader way.. .Iowa City is tied with Stanford, Connecticut, as having the highest proportion of its population having university bachelor's degrees or higher. I think...! think there are two things about university towns. The person has to.. .has to have the personal skills, intellectual horse-power, and comfort inside his own skin, dealing with a highly educated citizenry. And, exactly in parallel, has to feel comfortable dealing with, uh, top academic leaders and top people in the administration of a very important national institution. He has to be and feel that he is co-equal to the senior people at the University. You are equals. So, there are many people who are very good city managers and very good administrators, but they come out of backgrounds where by definition they're kind of the smartest kid on the block. That won't be the case here. There'll be lots of people who are just as smart, or smarter, so I think it's something inside the person.. .it's not just education. It's comfort dealing, uh, at that level, and at the same time, comfort dealing one-on-one with ordinary people who've got ordinary concerns about, uh, drainage, police protection, and uh, and a litter ordinance, and uh, and everything else. You have to be able to do all of the work with ordinary citizens and citizen participation, and you have to be able to present yourself, and hence the city, as a co-equal of the most senior people in the University context. That's the way I would read that, Dee. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 36 Wilburn! What guidelines do you typically recommend to a council that is looking for a participatory process, urn, in their searches, . . what guidelines do you recommend for us... Kobayaski/ For your own behavior? As a Council? Wilburn! Urn, whether it's us, or with.. .or the public, or just the process itself, what guidelines do you recommend? Kobayaski/ Uh, be clear with the public and yourselves, uh, make a plan and a schedule, and stick to it, uh.. .be aware at the very beginning that these are the kinds of processes that lots of folks try to influence by rumor and innuendo. I heard that James is going to be the top candidate; I heard it from.. .you know, and all of that kind of echoes around the community and echoes around the organization. Uh, you need to dampen that down and stay away from it, and certainly don't feed it. Urn, I think those...those are the main guidelines. Volland! I'm going to follow up with that. Kobayaski/ Could I just follow up. . , Volland! Absolutely! Kobayaski/ Uh, when we're talking outside, Sylvia gave me kind of a heads up that the Acting City Manager, Mr. Helling? Wilburn! Yes. Kobayaski/ Could conceivably be a candidate. Uh, it's.. .there's always a special circumstance when there's a serious internal candidate. Uh, and our view on that is that we should treat them just like any other candidate, and our recommendation to the Council is that they treat an internal candidate just like any other candidate. Easy to say, not always that easy to do, uh, in a situation where an internal person is a candidate, uh, the good applicants will ask the recruiter, is the acting guy going to get the job? (laughter) And if so, why should I risk applying and risk having that become public and risk, you know, a negative reaction with my, with my employer. Uh, to the extent that the Council is disciplined and keeps the process fair and open and deliberative, it helps us answer that question that will come to us from top applicants. So you.. .so what the Council does really af~ects our ability to pull together a pool. So, it gets back to a partnership strategy very much. Volland! I'm going to follow up with Ross' question. You said there are a variety of techniques that you use for public input. I was just wondering if you could give us some examples of things you suggest to get public input. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 37 Kobayaski/ One of the questions, one of the things that frequently comes to a council is, why don't you have a citizens' interview panel to help you? Why don't you let the citizens, or some citizens group will talk to the candidates, and give you input. Well, our view is, if you have a citizen interview committee, and it. . .it has the capability to recommend candidates in order, number one, number two, number three - that's a very bad thing. That takes away from.. . from your discretion. Uh, we have seen situations where a council has said, okay, we're going to appoint a group, we're going to appoint six people to interview the five finalists, but.. . and we would ask them, ask the same questions of each one of them. At the end of each interview, we want each one of the six people to write down their impressions on a form, with.. . design the form, without any discussion among the members ofthe panel. You have the interview. You write down your impressions. Either I or one of our people collect those pieces of paper. You go on to the next person. That gives the Council, if a committee of six, six additional individual data points, on candidates. You get.. .but you don't ask these people to discuss the candidates, You don't ask them to rank them. But you have six additional data points. In a way, it...it kind of looks the same, but it's very, very different. All you're doing is getting six opinions from people you.. .so that's a technique that can be used, uh, ifthe Council thinks it's valuable, or ifthe Council is under some significant external pressure, uh, to have some kind of external consultation. That's probably the sharpest, uh, that's probably the sharpest example. Bai1ey/ Can I follow up with my question? Urn, I also have an expectation that staff, particularly department heads, will be involved in this process in some way. How do you suggest that that happens? Or do you suggest that that happens? Kobayaski/ We have always found it valuable to interview key department heads and key actors, inside the organization, in the initial scoping. These people are going to be led, uh, it's not unreasonable for us as the consultant to say, what kind of leadership style really works well with people in your department? Really works well with your peers who are, uh, who are your fellow department heads or deputy department.. .that's an important thing for us to know. It's particularly important for us to know if. . .if they all have the same view, or ifthere's a significant split in view, that we somehow... we would need to share that with you and gain an understanding of what that means, I think it's, uh, I think it's not a particularly good idea, uh, to have department heads and staff, uh, involved in a formal way, at the end. Uh, it's.. .it's a little, it's a little, it feels like, it's a little too much of sharing the Council's power, with.. .with employees, in choosing their boss. Uh, now every situation is.. .but you can know for a certainty that they will participate informally. You can be certain that the Fire Chief or the Fire Union people will call up their colleagues in the towns that the candidates come from and say, what's this guy really like. I mean, all of that goes on, on the ground, uh, and uh, information pops up in various ways. It's not part ofthe formal process, but uh, it happens. It happens everywhere. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 38 Wilbuml Connie? Champion! I'm concerned about how you handle internal candidates. How do you handle them? Are they automatically part of the selection process? Kobayaski/ Do you mean are they automatically qualified for interview? I wouldn't say it's automatic. Uh, but it's extremely, it's extremely difficult for us, uh, to rule out somebody that's a long-term employee, who the Council has had invested sufficient trust to make the person be the interim executive. Uh, it's...it can happen, uh, we will sit around this table, uh, we will have a dozen people to talk about, uh, the, uh, the Interim City Manager will be, uh, will be in that pool. You will decide in conversation with us who you want to talk to in a formal way. It's really your call. But there's...in this particular condition and in this particular situation, uh, there's no reason, uh, to not expect things.. .things to follow along the path that I outlined, unless there's something weird or untoward that happens in the interim, which is, . . which seems like a very, very low level of risk. O'DonnelV I'm just curious, um, you said you anticipate this to take about six weeks. Is that what I understood you... Kobayaski/ I. . .just to clarify, it typically takes somewhere between six and eight weeks to get to the point where the Council has approved a document that looks like this. I'm sorry, I made a mistake. It's four to six weeks. I got off track here. O'DonnelV Okay, and how in-depth, um, do you do research on potential candidates? I mean, other than the resume and so forth. Do we have comments from, from urn, existing employers, urn, members ofthe community? How in-depth do you go? Kobayaski/ Uh, we do some preliminary checking before you get the initial pool of say a, of say a dozen. After you select five or six people to interview, we do in-depth interviews on, on.. . and reference checks, on each one. Uh, we document those, uh, before the final interview, uh, you get all of the references, uh, that.. .that we have.. .we have developed on each candidate, so you have a pretty broad and deep knowledge of the person's career history, and what people say about them, before the person's sitting in this seat and you're talking to them. So that's... O'Donnell! That answers my question. Correia! I just have a quick follow up to that. Do you do other background checks? Kobayaski/ Typically, typically, uh, we do educational credential verification, criminal history verification, and credit checks. Most of our clients, uh, prefer that, uh, that's done only when they have a finalist. But sometimes there's a preference to do that where.. . for all of the finalists, to clear that before.. .that's a preference issue. Uh, we can do it either way, uh, you don't want something to pop up late in the process that. . . that hurts the candidates and hurts the municipalities. Uh, we This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 39 would, uh, we would never. . . we would make sure that. . . that the people you see are thoroughly bedded, so that there wouldn't be any embarrassment, and I must say, 00, in this particular age, 00, where everybody has access to Google, and in a university community, people have access to a wider array of databases. You can be certain that whoever, whatever names show up, 00, publicly, we'll, you'll know, we'll be in every database that exists, uh, and since these people operate in the public realm, and are covered by newspapers, 00, it's quite likely that somebody shows up saying, did you know what x-y-z newspaper in Oklahoma said about Mr. So-On. Anybody who's made decisions, or anybody who's made, been in a controversy, uh, knows what those kind of headlines are like. What's important is not that they come up. What's important is that we know all ofthat, and have made ourselves comfortable with it before somebody in the external world comes up with it. You can say yes, we have looked into that, and you know, we're comfortable with it. What neither you or we can be, at that stage, is surprised. Vanderhoef/ Could you run through just a little bit of the cost? Kobayaski/ I'm sorry? Vanderhoef! The cost for, 00, a search. Give us an idea what you charge, and any extra costs that might be our purview? Kobayaski/ Iowa City did something very interesting. Iowa City said send us your qualifications, we'll negotiate the price later. Uh, and, 00, the costs really, more than anything else, are the function of labor, how much time is this going to take. Uh, the typical range for a search like this is probably, the professional fee, is probably in the $20,000 range, plus or minus $2,500. Uh, and the expenses for a search probably, probably will not exceed $5,000, Uh, one ofthe things I want to be, one of the things that we would need to talk about is, ifthere is extensive multi-day stakeholder participation that requires me or somebody like me to be here, that's more intense than is typical, then we have to negotiate the budget. Now, we can also design a process where a significant amount of that happens, but it's conducted by people here, and we get some written summaries and, 00, and so on. So, I just wanted to completely transparent here. We try to be very protective of the public's money, but if we need to spend a week here, we will spend a week here, but it's a little bit different than spending a day and a half, or two days here, but you have to run this process in a way that's comfortable and valid for the citizens of Iowa City, and we'll do whatever it takes to do that. Uh, and if it starts to add up to too many hours, we'll figure out a way to do it that uses some of your local resources here. Wilburn! ., . coming up on the time. Was there, did I miss someone? Elliott! Quickly, you said four to six weeks to get to this point, which I presume you mean, not what I'm holding in my hand, but what goes in it. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 40 Kobayaski/ No, no. To this thing being on the street. Elliott! Yes, yes. Kobayaski/ Okay, yeah. Elliott! But this isn't the important thing. It's what is in it that's the important thing. Kobayaski/ It's the words, correct, yeah, Elliott/ So, time frame and, uh, how soon you would be able to start. Timeframe for the entire search. Kobayaski/ Okay, uh, we can, we typically can start as soon as we have a contract. Uh, we can do scheduling of meetings in anticipation of a contract, if you can give us a pretty good idea of when contract execution will take place. We don't have to wait for the.. .for that and that kind oftelescopes things. Uh, if we do that, we can probably be here, uh, doing the scoping within a week or ten days of contract execution. Ifwe're efficient about it. Elliott/ And time frame for the search? Kobayaski/ We have found that typical time frame for a search, usually runs about 120 days. Urn, the factors that are involved.. .the factors that make that a little shorter or a little longer are, is there a holiday period in the middle of the recruitment thing, I mean, are we going to have Thanksgiving and Christmas in the middle of this? We hope not. (laughter and several talking) Uh... Karr/ We have about 15 minutes. Kobayaski/ Okay, if you, uh... Elliott! Thank you. Kobayaski/ Thank you, just to tie that off, really thoughtful and aggressive scheduling at the beginning is the most important thing in terms of shortening the time. If we pick, when we do the schedule, the weekend that you want to interview the finalists, and every Councilor and every other player marks that down on their calendar and locks it in, that's an enormous aid, Uh, if you wait until it's too late, somebody always has a niece that's getting married (laughter) or.. .orsomething, and those are the things that cause stretch out more than anything else. Wilburn! Urn, want to give you an opportunity to ask a question of us, and we are running short of time here, but I wanted to make sure you asked a question, if you had one. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 41 Kobayaski/ There's really only one question and that is, do you have a timetable for a decision? (several respond) Excuse me? Today, gee! Wilburn! We're going to decide which firm to, we've got one other interview, which firm to begin negotiating, urn, and urn, our October 2nd meeting would be when we hope to execute the, executing the contract, so, urn, we'll come up with one today to begin negotiating and see how that goes, Kobayaski/ Uh, we sincerely appreciate being invited. Uh, the person you will probably see the most of is me. Uh, I would do most of the work. Uh, if.. .ifthere are other people on our team, 00, who have contributions to make, 00, we have Dr. Lawrence Davenport available to work on this. His bio is in the proposal, uh, we will field the team and put together a schedule that works for Iowa City. Uh, and we'll be very pleased and honored to work with you. Thank you so much. Wilburn! Want to thank you for responding to our request for qualifications, being here today, and sharing your insights. So thank you. Kobayaski/ Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Wilburn! Take a break. (pause for break) All right, yep, we're ready. (several talking) Good morning. (several talking) We'll give you a minute to get settled there. Beezat/ I am ready to roll whenever you are. Wilburn! Ross Wilburn, Mayor of Iowa City. Beezat/ Hello, Mayor. Bob Beezat with the PAR Group. Wilburn! Bob, very nice to meet you, and thanks for being here this morning. Beezat/ You're welcome. Thanks for inviting us. Wilburn! You bet. We're going to do some introductions, have Council Members introduce themselves. We will, 00, hear your presentation. Council will ask questions, we'll take turns make sure everybody gets to ask one question, and then just open up for general questions, and like to give time at the end for you to ask a question of us. Beezat/ Okay. Okay, thank you. Wilburn! Dee, want to start us off? Vanderhoef/ Sure. Urn, tell me a little... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 42 Wilburn! Introductions! Vanderhoef! Oh, okay! (laughter) I'm starting, I'm in the flow of all this stuff, (laughter and several talking) That's true! I'm Dee Vanderhoef, and I've been on Council for, this is my 1ih year, so they're telling me I forget a few things these days. Beezat/ Nice to meet you, or see you again. I've seen you before, I think, at some things. V olland/ I'm Abbie Volland. I'm with the University of Iowa. I'm the City Council Liaison. Beezat/ Oh, good morning. Champion! I'm Connie Champion. Urn, my loth year. O'DonnelV Mike O'Donnell. I'm in my 10th year. Bailey/ Regenia Bailey, I'm Mayor Pro Tern. I'm in my 4th year and running for re- election. Wilburn! And you've already met Sylvia. Amy? Correia! I'm Amy Correia. I'm in my 2nd year. Elliott! I'm Bob Elliott. I'm in my 4th year, and at the end of this year I will fold my tent and silently steal away. (several talking and laughing) Beezat/ Good morning. Wilburn! Bob, you've already met Sylvia, our Human Resource Manager. Beezat/ Yes. Wilburn! We're also joined with Eleanor Di1kes, our City Attorney, and Marian Karr, our City Clerk. Beezat/ Good morning, Marian. Wilburn! Turn it over to you! Beezat! Okay, well you do have our proposal, 1...I assume, and you've all had a chance to memorize it and, uh, I will just touch on a couple ofthings there, but I do have another handout. When I got the follow up from Sylvia, she talked about three areas that maybe you have particular interest in. One was experience recruiting diverse candidate pool, uh, citizen participation, uh, some comments regarding This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 43 that, and then the timing schedule. So in could just pass out (unable to hear, away from mic).. . and I'll focus on that a little bit more. Wilburn! Bob, excuse me, but we are mic'd, so I'll have to wait for you to...it doesn't exist if you're not saying it into the microphone. Beezat/ (unable to hear away from mic).. .thank you. All right. I will get into this sheet in just about two minutes. I just want to very briefly say, uh, I'm Bob Beezat with the PAR Group. We're an executive search firm out of Chicago. Been in the business now since 1972, and urn, I think we pretty much were pioneers in this business back in the early 70's. Nobody was doing executive search, exclusively in the public sector in those days, and uh, we were one of the first, and I was fortunate, after having been a city manager for a little while to be the first person that PAR, Paul A. Reaurne, who is the head of the firm hired, so I was with them for 12 years when we built the company up from nothing. I went back to city management for ten years, and then returned to the business about 12 years ago, I guess, 1995, when Paul passed away about four years ago, I purchased the business from him and owned it for three years, but recently sold it to another group, and it's now headed by Heidi Vorhees, who is a former village manager in the Chicago area, uh, and is just a top-notch person. Couldn't have found a better person to pass it on to. Urn, so that's the history of our firm. We've done work all over the country, with every size community from probably 300, 400 population for some resort communities sometimes, to jurisdictions, not necessarily cities all the time, but jurisdictions for five, six, seven million. I did a regional planning director in the Philadelphia and New Jersey area a few years ago. It served about five and a half million people, so we've worked with cities and villages, manager positions, department head positions, uh, I think just about every conceivable type of search in local government, and we work exclusively in local government, and by that, cities primarily also counties, and then special districts. So, urn, the process that's laid out in the book, uh, in your request for proposal and how we responded to it, uh, we basically developed that process. I know you've heard from four other people, or three other people this morning, urn, I hadn't met Mr, Kobayaski before, but I was glad to have a chance to do so. I knew his, his predecessor Dick Bennett very well over the years, and uh, I know you had Bob Slavin here. Bob used to work for Paul many years ago, and Bob's an excellent man, so I know a few select, and Andrea I've met several times along the way, so I know you have good people to choose from. They're all good professionals, but they all learned basically from our company. We started the process, and that's the first thing I think I was a little surprised at when I started working for Paul is that he said executive search isn't delivering bodies. It's a decision making process, and that part.. .that our work as a consultant is to, uh, work with you, work with your community, to develop a vision. Not that you don't have one already, but how it builds around the city manager position, and to define that as best we can. Go out and find people that fit that for you, and kind of hold your feet to the fire that you said this is what you want, and let's move forward and, uh, and stick to these kinds of things, and so it's a, it's a process that This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 44 I think builds consensus and commitment to being successful. I could probably, if you hired us, line up ten people to come in next weekend or something to interview for you, but that's not what a good search process is about. It's a decision making process that builds consensus and commitment. So, urn, the steps that are in our process, pretty much everybody else follows, I'm sure. Uh, the recruitment profile that you've got a copy of, a sample of one of ours. Everybody kind of has done that over the years, and so we're, uh, not that others don't do it as well, very well also, but we've been doing it for quite a while. With. . . beyond that, uh, the process is very complete and professional. It moves along on a timely basis, and since I only have about seven or eight minutes left here, and you've had this already, I'm not going to go through it. I just...it did say key personnel, and since I'm the person who's making the presentation, I'll be the key personnel. I will be the person who will do the search and work with you, and I've probably done 200 to 250 searches myself over the years, and uh, hopefully can bring some value to your community as I work with you, and um, I wanted to spend a few minutes just with this handout. When I got the letter back from Sylvia, uh, she just said in particular there was, uh, three areas that you might want to discuss in a little more depth, and so I just prepared some information for you on that, on the first page, just about the experience and recruiting diverse candidate pool. I would just say, as I put down there, leaders in promoting diversity in the profession. When the Black Caucus and ICMA was formed back in the early 70's, our firm supported it and supported their annual event at the ICMA conference, and uh, over the years have had a great, uh, relationship with that Black Caucus, which eventually grew into the National Forum of Black Public Administrators, and uh, back in 1997, I think it is, Paul Reaume, who was the head of our firm and was one of the people who was very supportive of this starting and succeeding did a search for their executive director. He did it on a pro-bono basis, except for expenses, and John Saunders is still there. So, he's been there ten years, and we've been very active from that end. The women and ICMA leadership role, I mentioned Heidi Vorhees, who is our President. Heidi was a young woman in the profession back in 1983 I think she said, and she and two other women had the first women's luncheon at ICMA back in 1983, so there weren't a whole lot of women in the profession in those days. It's obviously grown since then, and she is continued to have a leadership role in that organization over the years. Appointments of some of the first women and minority to manager positions in the 1970's. There weren't that many folks in at the time, but I remember the first woman manager that was appointed in Illinois, to my knowledge, and we did that search. Uh, we also did a search, uh, out in California in those days, and I believe that it was the first African-American male to be appointed to a position out there in the late 70's, and we've had a very active role over the years, not only in terms of recruiting and.. . and presenting candidates, but I've been working with young people to try to get them into the profession, because there's a real need for people, and there's even a greater need now, and I think you will find, and I don't recall how long your present manager was here. I should have looked t~at up, but the market's changed a lot. All kinds of people like me and a few years younger are retiring, and uh, when we used tor This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 45 put ads out, 20 years ago, you could just put an ad in the city manager's newsletter and you'd get 75 applications no matter what. Now, almost any search, if you get more than 40 applications, uh, you're doing well. If you get those 40 to 50 applications, you really have to work hard to contact and proactively go after people. The market is much smaller, and even though there is more diversity in the market, it is still limited, and I'm very familiar with a lot of states, but I know in Illinois for instance there's only two African-American, 00, city managers or village managers, that I'm aware of. Maybe there's a third, and both ofthem are in the Chicago area. One of them is the result of a search, uh, I did within this last year. Uh, there's only two assistant managers that are African- American in Illinois right now. One's in Evanston, actually, I take it back. They just hired an African-American woman so there's two in Evanston now, and one in Oak Park. So it's a very limited market, and it continues to be, and the same with women. There are not many women managers. There's a...a lot more women have gotten into the business, but most of them have chosen for many reasons to stay as assistants, and to stay in their communities that way. So we have a very good record, and as I point down in number b over there, or letter b, an excellent record. In the past seven years, 25% of our candidates recommended for interview have been women and minorities, and 26% uh, have been appointed, have been women and minorities. And that's for all positions. That's not just city managers. That's police chiefs, excuse me.. . and various department head positions. There's actually more diversity in a lot of the department head positions than there are for manager positions, 00, and 00, so we've had I think a lot of success there, and very actively as part c, three specific strategies to pro actively develop diverse candidate pools. There are different professional associations and newsletters and web sites that, 00, do target women and minorities. National Forum of Black Public Administrators is one of the primary ones. Urn, there is the National Hispanic Network, which is a newer group that's grown up within the city management association, and we always contact them, 00, and get things on their web site. ICMA, the International City County Management Association also has, in addition to their regular newsletter and web site, have what they call a JOB, job web site which focuses for women and minorities in the profession. We target our database. We do have a broad knowledge and contacts with municipal government professionals, 00, and 00, I enjoyed looking and doing a little research in heading over here, or the other day before heading over here, looked at the National Forum of Black Public Administrators, their founders and past presidents, and 00, probably about a third ofthem, or at least half maybe even, people that we knew, that we were involved with in searches, they were candidates or ended up getting appointed to positions. So, 00, I was kind of glad to see that, just uh, knowing we've had a long, I think, and good history of working with people because communities need the diversity and they want the diversity, and unfortunately it's not always there. We do have a great knowledge in that area, We, uh, one of the things I think that we bring to the table, maybe more than some other firms, not that the others aren't good firms as well, but we have an excellent team, and I'll be the lead person and I'm the key person that you'll work with, but 00, we have, 00, Heidi Vorhees, of course, who This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 46 is our President who has been a leader in the women's roles within ICMA, 00, we also have Karl Nollenberger who, I don't know if anybody here.. .he started his . career as an assistant finance director in Iowa City back in 1970 or something like that, so he said I should say hello just in case anybody still.. .still remembers him, but Karl is, 00, went on to be eventually President ofICMA and uh, city and county manager both over the years and so we, and we have just good people that we've worked with over the years.. . over the years, that trust us, and if we call them to suggest candidates to us, they know we're serious about it and we're bringing them to communities that are serious about it, that we're not bringing people for show and uh, just to fill somebody's expectations. So, 1...1 know when we contact people, people know that there's a good opportunity for somebody, and we do have outreach to women, minority, ethnic based professional associations. We know the 1eaderships of those groups, and we contact them and talk with them, and I was just, I'm working with Yuma County, Arizona on a search for county administrator, and of course Yuma County has a lot of Hispanic, uh, folks in the neighborhood and across the border, and uh, so I was on the phone with their leadership several of their people over the last couple of days, some of whom we've done searches for before. So, I think we have that kind of contact and credibility with people that we can recruit a diverse pool of people for you, and probably just the last two minutes, the experience involving community members in a participatory process. I guess it really depends on what you want to do. We've worked with everything, from a minimal citizen participation, 00, and when I say minimal, we've talked to the mayor and council and that's it. They didn't want us talking to anybody else, and that's the way it works in some communities - not a whole lot, that's kind of on one extreme of, of the continuum, and then on the other end, we've had places where we've probably interviewed in group meetings and individual, up to 250 people. We did a city, I remember a number of years ago, that had about a quarter million population and they had, uh, 20 wards, I think, and so we did a meeting in every ward, and every ward had, they invited about 15 people to come, and about 10 or 12 showed up, so we heard everybody, and.. . and then there was involvement of, uh, a group of people in the decision making process as it went along. So I guess it really kind of depends what you want to do. When I gave three examples down here, three basic models, one is with selected community representatives, and that's probably with 75% or more ofthe communities we've worked with, They would maybe identify 10 to 15, maybe 20 people in the community, invite them to come to either individual meetings with the consultant or groups of two or three, and then you have a broader input, which can invite, I'll give you an example. I think I gave you one in the book. We worked with Richton Park, Illinois, just as an example, this past year, and there were seven, or six trustees and the mayor. Every, each one of the trustees and the mayor was asked to recommend three or four people that they would want.to have attend meetings, and they could be just people that they knew. They could be people that represented different organizations, some were athletic organizations, some were neighborhood groups, some were, uh, the library, other governmental bodies, uh, the park district and so on. So they all got, I think we ended up with a list of close to 50 names, uh, and This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 47 uh, the city then invited those people to meetings and we set it up to do three meetings, inviting about 15 to each, and we like to keep them to that so that you can do them in about an hour and a half, and people can all have their say. Urn, so, unfortunately, the timing of it was right before Christmas, and so we got some response, but not as much as we wanted, so, uh, they.. . after Christmas holidays, they re-advertised them, and they sent letters out again to people, but they also put ads in the newspaper, the local paper. They had an electric sign up in front of village hall that said, 'Come and meet this strange consultant guy and show up,' and so there were just some general invitation meetings where we did some late in the afternoon, about.. . from about 4:30 to 6:00 so you could catch people coming home from work and then some from like 7:00 to 8:30. So.. .uh, and, urn, so that's the input, and I guess generally, most communities we work with seek that input from the community in developing the profile, so that you hear it, because you're going to make the decision at the end, and so that we hear it while we're out recruiting people, as well as screening people. Some communities then will go beyond that, and I would say that it's maybe at most 5% of the communities will involve citizens in the actual selection processes, to some degree, and uh, urn, 1. . .I would just urge you as a consultant having done many of these things, if you do involve citizens in the actual selection process, uh, we need to do that carefully and wisely so that you do not leave yourself at loggerheads with your citizens, and I've seen it happen where there have been parallel interviews, as an example, the mayor and council are doing interviews, and there's a group of 10 or 15, or maybe 7 to 10 citizens representing different, and they will do interviews in another room, and then usually what happens is that group selects a chair person or two to come in and just report to the mayor and council their. . . their observations regarding the candidates. Unfortunately, it's very difficult for that group not to have their favorite. Uh, and I can tell you a lot oftimes, it's not the same favorite that the mayor and council has, and I say that because of...I think they have a different perspective. They see this person, and very importantly that has the communication and public relations skills that are important. Lot of times in a citizens' group there's a certain representative from the business community, so there's a lot of emphasis sometimes on sales and presentation, and there's no often at least a lot of, at least conscious thinking about how does this person really run an organization, and how are they going to work with you, and in the long run, you are the persons that are going to be working with this manager, and it's a little bit like a marriage. You have to have that commitment between you folks and whoever you're hiring, and so, urn, I would urge you to, uh, as you're laying this out to think about that, but if you want to involve people in the interview process, there's the idea of these parallel interviews. Again, what we did in...just as an example, in Richmond Park was, after it .got narrowed down to three candidates, did the first round of interviews on a Friday. On a Saturday afternoon starting about 1 :00, the mayor and those presidents and trustees invited everybody who had come to one of the input sessions to come and have cake and coffee with the candidates. So, and that went for about an hour and a half, and each candidate got up and made about a two or three-minute presentation, and then they just mingled around the hall and talked, and prepared a little comment sheet so that This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 48 when people finished talking with candidates, if they wanted they could write down some comments. Some wrote down number one, number two, number three. Others would say this one really liked their communication skills or whatever the case. So, that ranges all over. I guess we'll work with you however you want to do it, but since we're your consultant and whether you hire us or somebody else, I'll tell you what I think works best. Uh, but every community's different also, so, and the last part is the overview, uh, basically it's about a 12- week process. Urn, we begin within about two weeks of you telling us to proceed, and uh, and then it's about 12 weeks after that, you actually interview, following the process set forth in the proposal. If you do want to have broader input and you wanted to do something maybe like, uh, I gave you an example of Richmond Park, invite people to come to meetings, if you want to formally send letters you've got to have some lead time on that, so that would slow down the process, probably add a couple weeks to it at the beginning. If you want more involvement at the end, and doesn't always have to stretch it out but it can stretch it out another week, so depending on how much of that goes on, you could add two to three more weeks to the process overall, and that's on the basis that you're ready to meet when we agree we're going to meet, which doesn't always happen. Uh, we follow a very good schedule, but I know. . . and councils have all kinds of things that come up, and I understand. So, but that's the general time schedule. Uh, and we have the holidays in there too, so you're not going to interview probably anybody from December 16th or 1 ih until maybe January 6th. I don't know when Christmas and that falls exactly in the week, but you could probably do some interviews the weekend after New Year's. So that's my presentation. I'll let you ask questions. Wilburn! All right. We're going to start with Abbie, Volland! I'm just curious how often we'd should plan on seeing you face-to-face? Beezat! Uh, you would see me here three major times, and then it would depend how much, how many days, but I would come out to do the profiles, uh, profile interviews, and so, uh, generally we schedule two days to do that. If you want more than that because you want broader participation, then you get to see me more. Probably not a plus, but anyway, that's one occasion. Uh, then really we're not back until we prepare a short list for you. Usually it's the top 10 or 12, and we would send that to you, give you time to read that over, and within about three or four days of us sending that to you, I would come out and meet with you, and we would talk about the "candidates and work through that group till you pick out the five or six you want to interview, and then usually within two weeks, three weeks at most, don't want to lose people once we got 'em interested, I would come back and be here for the interview process, which is usually a couple days, and again, how that would schedule and work out, some communities will do a first round, and then wait a week and bring people back, but if you're flying people in, most communities like to start on a Friday and kind of.. .so three times and that's all you gotta see me! This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,. 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 49 Volland! Thank you! Wilburn! Connie? Champion! Urn, because we're not in any great crunch to get this done, would you recommend that we wait until after the holidays to begin? Like should we wait until January or February to begin this process? Beezat! Not...I wouldn't wait. This is September, I mean, I'm not sure exactly when you're going to make this decision, but if you just made it in the next two weeks or something like that, we would be out here, as an example, somewhere around the 10th of October or something to get things started, and so you got November, December, urn, you're not going to be interviewing, but, you know, if you delayed 30 days, but I wouldn't want.. ,course it's up to you.. . you're not going to be interviewing people it would seem at this point until after the holidays. Champion! And, urn, just to follow up on that, is that a bad time to get people to move to start a job, or. . .I mean, I'm just curious about time1ines. I mean, January - who wants to move to Iowa in January? (laughter) Beezat! Some very smart people, I'm sure. (laughter) Very intelligent people. Urn, moving.. .urn, is a problem, but it's a problem any time, anywhere. It's one of the biggest changes that have happened in the profession in the last ten years, is people have kids in school, uh, they don't move anymore, even though they tell you they are, and we try to be very clear to people that if you're going to put your hat in the ring, you talk to anybody. I tell people, I don't care what your family circumstances are, but you talk to anybody and everybody you gotta talk to because I don't want you being the one they want and you want the job, and then I hear children crying in the background, which I've heard when I've called candidates up and said, 'You're the candidate!' (laughter) 'Daddy, daddy, we can't go!' You know! Uh, that happens, and it happens more and more, and we just finished a search in the Chicago area, and it's not finished because the top candidate decided, uh, he and his wife, that they weren't going to move. Talked to this person till we were blue in the face. So, I just think it's difficult. I would say timing-wise, if people do have kids in school, let's just say you started in October, you interviewed in early January, uh, somebody's probably not going to be starting then until mid-February, early March. So you're kind of getting into the next school year. They're going to sell.. .so I would see that probably as a better time than one where we just finished one in August, where, uh, it actually ended up finishing in September, and one person dropped out because they got their kids already started in their school, and so.. .moving that's one reason the pools are smaller, besides a lot of people retiring, but also, urn, I would say that's not a bad time, urn, I guess if you could start your job in April or May, but you never know. I would just say it's pretty good. I wouldn't worry about that. If people really have children, I mean.. ,(laughter).. .if they want them to finish This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September .15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 50 school (laughter) mine are grown up, thank God, uh, so anyway...! don't think that's a bad time. Yes, sir? O'Donnell! You said you've done this about 200 times? Urn, in your experience, which is the most.. .well, what I'm.. .I'm trying, is it better, is it more orderly, is it more organized with the selected community representatives, or broad community input? Which... which has been the most informative for the community? Beezat! I really think it depends on the community culture. Some communities, and I.. . and I find particularly university communities, uh, the expectation is a broad participation and input. I don't know ifthat's the case here, but I know when we've worked with other communities, so, urn, that is, urn, I think that's the determining factor. I can tell you from a consultant, if! worked with a selected group and worked with you and also you department heads to get input, I think I'll have a pretty good sense of what you're looking for, but uh, uh, that doesn't mean I will have met your community's expectations of their input. So 1.. .that's what I would say is that I'm not trying to weasel out of something. I know I'll get enough out of a limited group, uh, because I will hear the same thing after a while, pretty repetitively, but people have different nuances too, and I think one of the things that we are able to convey to people is that, ifthis is the case here in Iowa City as in many university communities, it's a very engaged citizenry, and we've heard from lots of them, and I think it's helpful to communicate that from that standpoint, uh, so, urn, and I, just based on Connie's question, the time is not an issue, if it takes a couple extra weeks to get, and it will cost you some extra money, even though you didn't ask for that in the proposal over here, but anything beyond me being here two days, is going to cost you a little extra money. Uh, I can go from about 7:00 in the morning to about 10:00 at night. After that, I'm listened out, but I'm pretty good, pretty strong yet. (laughter) But beyond that, I think if you want broad participation, you're going to want a few more opportunities for people. Sometimes, too, build it around a weekend, you know, have some Saturday things. We've done some things sometimes at libraries, and just had general forums too, in addition to invited people, and uh, and I run those meetings and do all that. Uh-huh? Bai1ey/ So, you briefly mentioned involving staff, but that's not outlined in the participatory process. Can you talk a little bit about your experience with that, and how you would suggest we approach that? Beezat! Yes, and I left it out consciously because it said community members, and I didn't want to kind of muddy the waters. I would say 95% of the communities we've worked with, uh, do have us interview department heads. Uh, and sometimes they're done in small groups ofthree, four, five. Sometimes they're done individually. Anybody who intends to be a candidate, we don't make them part ofa group. If they want to get their input, we'll listen to them. You know, give them time as well. Usually with.. .they're done with individual department heads, they're like half hour interviews, uh, and if they're with small groups of This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 51 three to five department heads at a time, it'd be maybe an hour set aside. Uh, so, uh, in some communities, uh, we've met with union representatives, ifthat's a strong, uh, presence and element in the community, So we meet with that, those groups. Depending on how large the city manager's office staff is, and beyond department heads, sometimes we'll have meetings with administrative assistants, and sometimes there's other staffliaisonpeop1e who are not necessarily department heads, but.. .but have ongoing day-to-day contact with the manager, and then with the rest ofthe organization. So.. .uh, I would say most communities have us do that, certainly with department heads. Had just a few who didn't want us to talk to the department heads either, which was kind of unusual, but that says something to the candidates then too, so, you know. , . Bailey/ And do you involve them on the back end? Beezat/ I would just give you the same caveat that I did earlier. Urn, that department heads are looking for something different sometimes than you're looking for, and they're going to work for that person, and I've been a manager myself so, and I've been.. . anyway, 1.. .youjust have to be careful about that. There's.. .no matter how much you tell people not to rank 'em, they're going to rank 'em! You can't have a bunch of professionals sitting around a room interview, and people not ticking them off, you know, one by one. So, urn, and then you got the reaction, whether they're the citizens or the department, well, what'd you ask us for? Why did you take our time if you're not going to listen to us? And you have listened to them, but that's not the way it's going to look. You got another aspect...a lot of different aspects ofthe picture that you gotta look at, that they are not looking at. Urn, so, urn, you're elected to make those decisions, and I urge you to make those decisions, and again, all the input you can up front that fits your community, uh, and if you want to have something, again, say department heads, often they're invited to.. .if you have a social event, kind of a meet-and- greet type of thing, and they're invited too, and they can button-hole you on the way out, but it's not the same as taking a formal, or even informal, vote. So... Correia! Urn, what particular issues do you think are important for us in looking at our candidate, based on our town-gown characteristics.. .or character of our community? Beezat/ Well, I mentioned I've worked with some different university communities on different, not only searches but other kinds of management studies, so um, I'm assuming, and I really don't want to speak like I really know Iowa City because I don't, but I'm assuming that there is a, uh, high level of participation, uh, in a lot of things in the community, and that the role of the manager here, um, I would assume is going to be very interactive with, uh, the community, and community leadership, and I'm sure all of you have a role, as well, to do as elected officials and that, so I would assume that those abilities, background experience to be very, um, able to forge and build good relationships and partnerships, whether it's been in a town-gown situation or not, but that they're able to do it with the primary, uh, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 52 groups that characterize the community and I guess I'm thinking in some cases I've worked with communities that have a strong military presence, and so sometimes you have people with a military background, which is great, and they can do that, but there's also people that don't have a military background, but they can build good strong respectful relationships. So I would say that's I would think important here, urn.. . again, I'm only assuming because I've worked some other communities. You gotta be willing to work with processes that, urn, you cannot impose your judgment quickly (laughter) or, uh, maybe as forcefully as you might in some other communities, and that you have to be comfortable with that, and know that the process is often as important to a community and how the decision is gotten to as it is, uh, what the final decision is. So, those are a couple of things, urn, you know, there's other things sometimes with uh certain enforcement issues in university communities, whether it's police or housing and health and some of those kinds of issues. Urn, but I guess I don't. . .I think a good manager who has a record of., .ofuh interacting with and a diverse group of people within the organization, within the community, diverse in all kinds of ways - social, economic, intellectua1- uh, different approaches, so that kind of openness and uh, would be things that we would talk to people about and that we would be trying to assess in evaluating, both in terms of recruiting people and then evaluating them. Elliott/ Got a quick question, and then a request. Beezat! Yes, sir. Elliott! What's on Of-Counsel? O-f.. .your card says Of-Counsel. Beezat! Oh, Of-Counsel. Elliott! It says...it says Of-Counsel. (several talking at once) Beezat! Oh, just Of Counsel. . .uh, it's, they were going to call me President Emeritus. I sold the business and they didn't think I was old enough to be Emeritus, so they said we'll call you Of-Counsel. Elliott! Okay! (laughter) Beezat! Okay, sorry! Elliott! Okay, the request is, tell me how, urn, your.. .because it appears that you've done more management consulting than executive search. Tell me how the management consulting links into executive search. Beezat! I'm not.. .I've done probably... Elliott! That's what I picked up from the proposal. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 53 Beezat/ ... background, yeah. Yeah, uh, so how does management search and kind of an organizational, consulting mesh together. Elliott! In my mind I have them linked together. I'm anxious to see what you... Beezat! Oh, yeah, they are. You get to know in an organization when you do a management study, whether it's a pay in class study, whether it's a, a police organizational study and staffing study, or.. .or citywide organization. You learn a lot about the organization, urn, and uh, not just that organization. I guess my experience, I've probably worked with at least a hundred or more different cities and villages and uh, maybe 150, I don't know. Uh, so I guess I've always thought I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly out there (laughter), and uh, and I think I can recognize the different ones, and I think it helps me in doing searches to.. . explain a city to a candidate, uh, better maybe than somebody else might, I don't know, but I think so because I've seen a lot. So I think it helps me get a better sense of all the dynamics that go on in an organization, and I'm not going to learn that to the degree here if I'm doing this search and talking with department heads and maybe some other staff (coughing) but I think it does give me a good sense of organizational dynamics, and also how, you know, how it relates to the community, is when you do a management study. So much is built aroUnd what are the community expectations for services, and.. .at least that's how we would organize a lot of them. How are you delivering what people want? And so understanding what people want in a community - everybody wants kind of, you know, great services for the lowest price possible, but different communities, again, have different uh levels of expectation, just as we were talking about some ofthe participation. So I think it helps me to, uh, I think it helps that I was a manager, as well, in communities, because I... Elliott! Thanks! That kind of helps me. Beezat! Okay. Karr/ Fifteen minutes. Wilburn! Thank you. Dee? Vanderhoef/ Uh, well, I've changed my question several times because you covered a whole lot of area here, Bob, and I do appreciate that. Uh, tell me a little bit about, urn, the cost lines, uh, what we can expect. Beezat! Okay. Uh, the basic cost for the search is $15,500, and that would include all the steps in the process, urn, the expenses would be not to exceed $4,500, and those expenses would include the profile, uh, of which you've seen a copy. That usually runs about $1,200 once it gets printed up, urn, I just mentioned as. . . that's probably close to one-third of the cost, and then we use that to go out to people, to This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 54 contact people. We usually have about 350 to 400 printed because we'll probably send out 100 to 150 to people to stimulate their interest in the position, which gets kind of into the other area of that $4,500, probably $500 to $600 is going to be mailing and shipping and sending you folks stuff and reports, Fed Ex and that. Uh, probably there's $400 to $500 in telephone, uh, more than likely I'd be driving over here, so you'd have some mileage for the three times I come out, and I'll probably stay over in a hotel, unless some of you got extra rooms or something, you know, if you want to save a few dollars, but uh, anyway, so that, you know, would not be that expensive. (laughter) When I worked in one community, a woman on the council owned a bed and breakfast, so they just put me up, which was very nice, you know? So.. . (laughter and several talking).. . saved a few dollars! And anyway, so more than likely we wouldn't reach the $4,500, but uh, so that's kind of the basic expenses. There's two other potential expenses, uh, if you want us to do it, and that's to do some ofthe background checks. Once it gets down to the last five or six that you're going to interview, uh, we use a service to do credit check, felony court check, and motor vehicle driver's check. I think we're charging about $125 for that, whatever we get charged we kind of pass that on to you. And we do that as a separate thing because some communities will just do it themselves. They'll have their police department do it, and sometimes they're all set up to do that, or their HR Department to do it, and so that's an extra cost. So if you had six people in for interview, maybe cost you $750, $900 or something. The other thing is, which people don't do too much anymore, is the, but some still do is the Meyers-Briggs testing, uh, or assessment tool. Not really a test, and we have the capability of doing that. Usually when people want that done, it's done maybe, again, on the last five or six that they're going to interview, and I think that's running about $200 per person, $225 - don't hold me up. So those are the costs. There is, if you do have additional days that you want me, if you can't squeeze everybody in to those two days from 7:00 to 10:00 and you need me here another day or two, then it's $1,000 a day plus expenses, and if it's a half day then it's $500 a day, which happens sometimes. Sometimes if I am here on say a Friday and we do a lot of meetings, but Saturday morning you maybe have a couple things to get people in and throw me out of town by noon, you know, and pay for half a day. So those are the only other, and then you will have expenses bringing people in, but that's your cost, as you know, so I think you can kind of figure $20,00 to $22,000, $23,000.. . depending maybe how much time extra you might want. Wilburn! How many searches do you have going on? Are you involved in any searches right now? Beezatl Me? Wilburn! Yeah, uh-huh. Beezat/ I have two. I'm semi-retired Of-Counsel (laughter). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 55 Wilburn! And where in the process are you at with, we're probably looking at, uh, our October 2nd meeting, hopefully contracting with somebody formally at that point. Beezat/ Yeah, the one, . .one down in Arizona, I'll be meeting with them probably like that week of October 10t\ whatever that is, to go over candidates and we'll probably be interviewing people towards the end of the month, and hopefully it's finished. Uh, we're working with another.. .I'm working with another community in Illinois, uh, we're probably going to present candidates to them towards the end of October, and interview before Thanksgiving, so.. .so really for me, at least, the timing standpoint it's not a problem. I've not taken a couple others because I figured if we do get hired for this one, uh, you're probably going to want somebody here some extra days, and so I've just kind of kept myself open because I can work whenever I want to work, at this point, and uh, uh, so I'm just doing two. When I owned the company, I was usually doing six or seven or eight by myself on a full-time basis, and I was probably helping others learn and do a few more, so.. .at least if your concern is how much time do I have, I can do it, and uh, I'd very much enjoy this. If you select somebody else, they got about five other jobs waiting for me but I said, 'Nope, I want to go to Iowa City,' it would be fun, but uh, anyway... Wilburn! Urn, I wanted to give you a chance to ask us a question. . . Bai1ey/ I just want one quick follow up question about background checks. Do you do additional background checks, any kind of media search or educational credentia1ing? Beezat/ Yes, we do. . . Bailey/ Okay, Beezat/ .. . and I should have mentioned that, I'm sorry. We do the education check up front on, when we give you those 10 to 12 people, we will have verified their educations, we will have done a couple of reference calls for them. We will have Googled them at that point, just to see what strange things are out there, and I know you will (laughter) everybody's starting doing it! Urn, and then on the five or six that you want to have interviewed, that is, I'm sorry, an additional check. I think it runs maybe $40 to $50. We do a Lexus-Nexus report. I'm sorry.. .on the final ones. Bai1ey/ All right. Thanks, Ross. Wilburn! Yep. Urn, chance to ask any question of us? Beezat! I guess I am kind of, you've mentioned the timing of it, so if you're looking to make a decision in early October, that was just one question I had, and I think timing wise that certainly would work out for us and for me. Urn, we've talked a This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 56 lot about participation. What is your expectation? Have you kind of worked that through as a council yourself? Wilburn! As a Council we haven't, um, our. . .just to give you some quick history here. Our local newspaper has basically done a "send us what you think the next city manager" and so several groups have mentioned some type of participatory process. We just, the University just hired a new President and it's actually the second search. I actually was on the first search committee, and urn, there was some controversy on how that ended. . . Elliott/ Some? Wilburn! .. . and how (laughter) and how it was not participatory, and there were some promises made up front into how it would be, and then it wasn't, and so.. .um, I would imagine that at least as a community there's some level of expectation of participating, but the Council itse1fhas not had a formal discussion about that. Bai1ey/ We were actually waiting to hire a firm to facilitate that discussion, so they heard everything. Beezat/ That's really I think timing wise, 00, I'm assuming I didn't look up what your past manager is.. .was being paid. He was here for quite a few years though... Wilburn! 21. Beezat/ .. .21, so more than likely, but I don't know that, the longer some manager's in a position the less competitive they are in the marketplace.. . your salary range, but I don't know what that is right now. Uh, and what you were paying him, so I don't know what your expectations are, but we would tell you what we think it costs when we get to that point. I just, again, from working with many communities, sometimes, and maybe you're the exception, of which there are some, that would be paying very competitively, but generally we find the longer somebody's been in a community, the less competitive the range is for the marketplace. But, I don't know that for sure. I just mention that to you. Vanderhoef! Uh, the $140,000 to $150,000. Beezat/ Is where he was at, in that range? Yeah, we would. . . Wilburn! That's salary, not, you know, other... Beezat/ Right. My guess is that's in the ballpark. Ifwe were selected, we would do specific research and make a recommendation to you within that framework, but that certainly sounds like it's a...in the ballpark. Wilburn! Well, I thank you for your interest in Iowa City, and your time here today. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 57 Beezat/ Thank you. Thank you for inviting us, and I wish you luck, and this is a very important decision you make, and 00, we believe in cities, that's why we got into this business, and I think if you see at the bottom of our letterhead, 00, assisting in the achievement of excellence in the public service, that's what we're about. That's what we've been doing for 30 some years now, almost 40 years, and we believe in what you do, and I know you believe in what you do, and we will help you, 00, do what is best for your community. That's our primary goal. That's why we're in this business, and uh, we always, we look at this as an extension of our public service, so I hope I get a chance to work with you. I would enjoy it, but ifnot, I wish you the best. Thank you for inviting us. (several respond) Wilburn! Uh, before we, I'll let you just say (people talking in background). Bob, just, sorry, folks are going to say bye to you. I'll let folks do that. We're going to, I need to have Sylvia just give a quick direction as to what information all the candidates were provided, and then we'll take the break, so.. .urn, you want to let it roll for a minute why folks just go ahead and shake his hand. Sylvia's going to just give us a quick run-through on what information she provided all the candidates, just so that we have that before we take a break here. Mejia! Just so you understand what the candidates were provided, because one did allude to the current interim city manager. Urn, what I tell the candidates is who is in here. I explain that it's a seven-member council but there's actually people at the table and how that happens. I explain that Eleanor and Marian are here, but I also explain that there is no city manager in the room because he could be a candidate, so that's how that came up in terms of the one candidate, or consultant, who brought that up, and a couple of them actually asked, as well, so just so you understand, they are aware that our current city manager may be a candidate. Wilburn! Why don't we take ten then come back and review our reactions and see if we can come up with.. ,(several talking). (BREAK) Okay, we're going to take time now to review our reactions, sharing any additional information that you might have, urn, and again, hopefully select one firm that we can pursue negotiations with, As you think back on the interviews, urn, maybe just to start just to get an initial idea where we're at, if everyone could just tell what one firm stood out for you and what caught your attention about that firm. Champion! Can we come out with two firms? Wilburn! Do a couple, yeah, sure. Dilkes/ Can Ijust say one thing? Wilburn! Yes. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 58 Dilkes/ Before we start, and that is, it's occurred to me that we're not going to be able to negotiate a contract, I mean, we've been aiming for that October.. .until we know what participatory you all want to use. Okay? So as you're, okay. Wilburn! Right, so what one or two firms stood out for you, and what was it that caught your attention? Correia! I liked.. .my two would be the first one, Waters, and the last one. For both I liked how they talked about (unable to hear; paper crunching) a diverse candidate pool and their track record with that, getting (unable to hear) and what was in their prospectus or their RFQ. I like how they both talked about the community process. I liked, um, sorry... Karr/ .,. potato chip bag. Correia! .. .right. How Andrea talked about doing the community meetings, getting the pros and cons and then forwarding that, rather than. . .I think a few others just talked about getting the input in the meeting, but we wouldn't get it unless an individual might send us afterwards on their own volition, so I liked that. Urn, and.. .those were the major things. Wilburn! Bob, one or two firms, and what was it that caught your attention? Elliott/ You always wait until I have my mouth full. Slavin - he's far and away number one for me. Urn, number two was PAR, but he just wouldn't quit talking. Bai1ey/ I felt that way about Slavin. Elliott! Uh, I thought Slavin, the gentleman from Slavin, was the poorest speaker we had, but I really liked what he described as the way they go about their process, so my top one would be Slavin. If I need a second one, it would be Bennett Yarger, but Slavin is obviously my far and away number one. Wilburn! Dee, which one or two stood out for you, and what was it that caught your attention? Vanderhoef/ Slavin is my number one choice. I think he showed in his stats that he certainly was, uh, out there working with, 00, diversity with that 25, 26%, and knowing the market that we heard mentioned, of how many candidates that are out there in the diverse world, uh, I think that 25,26 speaks... Correia! Slavin didn't have the 25, 26. I thought that was the last guy. Wilburn! The last one... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 59 Vanderhoef! Well, there was another one though, and I'm pretty sure it was (several talking at once). Elliott! .. . about 25% of placements have been minority and!or female. (several talking) Vanderhoef! Thank you, Bob. Uh, my second choice would be PAR, uh, Bob certainly, uh, hit in his.. .his notes all the questions we've been asking earlier, and uh, knows the pitfalls, mentioned those. Certainly he has the capabilities on diversity, uh, and the multi-community processes. Both of them had that. Elliott! He was the most likeable, I thought. I really... Wilburn! PAR. . . the last one, PAR was the one that stood out for me. Urn, he really ans. , .he was thorough, what he gave to us, and just in his conversation answered every, almost every question I had before I, you know, I had to sit and think of a question to ask him. Urn, there was a comment that he made when he was talking about the participatory process, and there was one town, urn, where he was talking about the, again, whatever we decide, broad or selective or not, but when he was talking about the broad, he said, uh, you know, we did this, but we didn't, ,.it was around the holiday.. .we didn't get the response that we wanted, and so we went out for more, and so it showed me there's an internal value of, you know, he's not afraid of process, he certainly.. ,you know, you're the council, you're in charge of this, and I would, you know, keep your feet to the fire, be clear, urn, but it seemed as if it was a natural process for him that he valued, and it wasn't just the fact, oh this council wants all of this input, but he said, you know, we didn't get what we wanted so we went and got. . . that was very significant for me. I also had talked to a couple, urn, just some other information that stood out for me, urn, I had spoken to a couple of other HR directors - no offense, Sylvia - urn, and but one of them had commented, you know, on all of them, you know, they're all professional, but they said, you know, you'll like Bob, and I did. So.. .Abbie, one or two that stuck out and what was it about them? Volland! PAR was also my favorite. I thought his description of what makes it a unique position for a university was really different than anybody else's, that it's an interactive role with the community. He really, urn, presented relationships, looking for people who can forge good relationships, and I thought it was really important that he talked about being willing to work with the process and being comfortable with things taking time and especially in this community, working with people and being comfortable with that. I really liked everything he expressed, plus he presented exactly what we asked for, which I thought was a very strong quality. Champion! I could actually put Slavin and PAR in a hat and pull out a name, because I think they both were really incredible. I loved, is it Slavin, is that how you pronounce it? Urn, I loved their enthusiasm about Iowa City and university towns, and I think they pass that on to the candidates, very enthusiastic approach. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 60 So, I guess Slavin would be my first and PAR would be my second, but I think either one of them would be terrific. O'Donnell/ I thought Slavin was far and away the best one. He came here prepared, urn, the experience of city leadership on both oftheir parts here was very important to me. Urn, Ijust thought he was the best prepared. My second choice was Bob with PAR Group. He too had the city leadership experience, and I mean, he seemed to answer every question we had, and I was really satisfied with each answer. Wilburn! Regenia? Bai1ey/ By far and away, urn, PAR, and the thing that stood out for me is I felt 1ikewe would be putting ourselves in good hands. He was very comfortable in saying you've hired me as a consultant and I will give you advice, but I don't think he would be...I mean, I think he's also very responsive to what the community and how we want to shape the search, and so I thought there was a nice balance, and I thought that came from experience. I had some concern actually of seeing somebody Of-Counsel applying, because I didn't know how hard they might be interested in working, urn, you know, they've done a lot of searches. How many, what kind of assumptions they would make, but he seemed really ready to jurnp in, to be engaged, and I think that his style, Bob said that he was the most likeable of ariybody, I think he will be able to talk to people and get information because of his affect and his very easy-going style that perhaps no one else could, and I think that's going to be critical in this community, because people will say one thing and then they'll say something else as they go along, and I think that that's an important quality. Wilburn! Okay. Any other insights just in hearing each other talk, or that you read in the material that anyone wants to put out there - it appears that PAR and Slavin, at least that's what we heard the most of here, Bai1ey/ Do also like, you asked a couple questions about the Midwest experience, and I do value that with PAR, I think that's critical, and I didn't weigh it very heavily until I started listening to. . , Vanderhoef/ I will just add my own insights from working with Bob Slavin, that he is tireless in working, and he does continue, uh, get new input and look in other directions, as he alluded to this morning. It's more difficult with the Iowa League experience, and he's going back out for more to get the right thing. Uh, the other thing is that the city managers that he has placed in Iowa, the Muscatine one - AJ. Johnson - and Jeff Pomeranz for West Des Moines, are both Board members right now of Iowa League of Cities, and they are outstanding. Have good working relationships, uh, with the Slavin Group, so I think we will get, uh, that kind of information. It was very interesting to me to hear the information that, uh, in general without naming the people, that Bob got from, uh, staff, that tells me, This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 61 uh, he's very personable and has confidence with these people to, what they're looking for and evaluating, uh, both what was good or not so good previous. So, they opened up. . . Elliott! Excuse me, Sylvia, how long did you tell them they had, their opening remarks? Mejia! I think the letter stated 15 minutes, and I repeated it in,..I said about 15 minutes, and then I said you'd be asking questions. Wilburn! Any other insights about what was presented, or the material or. . . Correia! I guess it wasn't insight. I was writing down where everybody was, and we have seven folks that like PAR, and three.. .that were all.. . seven that had PAR, and then three Slavin. I was the one that gave a second choice... Elliott! Three Slavin? Correia! Three Slavin, seven... Elliott! Mike, Connie, Dee, me. Wilburn! I was hoping. . . before we have a hand count and vote that we could, since whoever we end up, we all have to live with that, just so we could hear each other's understanding. Correia! I was just trying t show (several talking) overlap, that seven also, all had PAR, so I was just sort of thinking if we're just trying to go at.. ,we were all, seven of us all liked PAR. O'Donnell! And I thought Slavin had four, at the top. (several talking) Bai1ey/ What else did you want, Ross? I'm sorry, I wasn't following you. Wilburn! Urn, well, I understand where you're going, so one, I was just. . .I also want to give an opportunity if anybody had a concern or reaction. That was going to be my next question, and I'll start. I did have a, I understand what you all are saying about, uh, about Slavin, but I personally, and I don't know if this is just my stuff, I had a negative reaction to his .response about the participatory stuff, urn, it almost, uh, and again this may be my reaction, but it seemed as if it were, uh, the, I mean, all of them said, and we all know, that we the council in the end make the final decision, but it was almost this, he really hammered away that, you know, you've got to make the decision. I'm trying to.. .I'm fishing for the word that he used, but it almost. . . Elliott/ Keep control. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 62 Wilburn! Yeah, and I had a, it almost seemed as ifhe had a fear of what we were thinking about that, and I, urn, and so I would have concerns about him in whichever, urn, Bob with the PAR Group laid out some of those concerns, but he ended it with, but you know, whatever you decide you want to do, that's what we'll do, and he laid out the three examples of participatory process, so urn, I had some concern with Slavin that. . .may be struggling with what we want that process to look like. O'Donnell! I was more concerned with Bob, with the PAR Group, for that same reason, on the same issue, because I thought Bob specifically was.. .was warning us against broad participation, which I think.. .no, that's what he said, and he's the one that I remember kept saying keep control, it's your decision, so that's what I heard with Bob. Elliott! The thing that got me about, uh, my namesake with the PAR Group was he started off saying he had limited time, and at sometime around a little before quarter after he said he had two more minutes, and then he spoke for another fifteen minutes. And it just seems to me he didn't have any concept oftime, and that really bothered me. Champion! I noticed that too! But on the other hand, he answered.. .we didn't have to ask those questions - he answered the questions. Bai1ey/ Well, and I, urn, and so much of this is how somebody strikes you, and we're going to be working with this person, and uh, I had some challenges with Bob from the Slavin Group, and I felt that he didn't do a great job with the diversity question. I felt that that question made him uncomfortable, and I didn't write down any more about that. I just wrote "not comfortable with the diversity question," despite what they might have quoted for statistics. So that was, that seemed like a disconnect to me, urn, and what Bob said about the two Bob's, I would flip. I had a hard time with the length of answers from the Slavin Group versus the Bob, and once again, I think we get a lot of experience from the PAR Group that, urn, and a lot of willingness to...I don't want to say give advice, but be a consultant, and I think that's a really critical balance, is when I wil11isten to you and when I will say in my experience these are the kinds ofthings that have worked, and I think that's going to be critical to us, and he also kind of promised that he would hold our feet to the fire on the process we determine, which given that there will be some changes around this table during this process, I think that that's going to be very important, that somebody holds us accountable for what we've decided. Otherwise, it's going to be costly, and we may end up looking a little bit like the University. So...I think that that's an important, was an important statement. Elliott! But yes, clearly the most difficult part of this is us deciding collectively what we're looking for. Bai1ey/ And I think he got that. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 63 Elliott! See, that's what I liked about Slavin, and we all hear, we filter through our own filter, so, uh, I'm sure we're all being very honest. With Bob Slavin, I thought that with his responses to questions, there was more specificity from him than from anyone else. The first person just was reluctant to be specific about anything, and perhaps that carried over into the next one, because I really liked the fact that he gave specific examples of what to do, how to do it, and what had been done in the past. Wilburn! Bob, you mentioned, you know, we all experience things through a different 1ense. Elliott/ Uh-huh. Wilburn! Uh, if we, in going into this and the information we gave out to them, we wanted the firms to address availability, attract talented pool, diversity, participatory process, urn, I guess it comes down to which firm do we believe best meets that criteria. Again, one way to do it is, uh, vote. Another way is looking for overlap, which is what Amy was getting into. Bailey/ Which I really liked, because we all have to live with this...I would have a hard time living with Slavin. (several talking) Bai1ey/ I understand that, Mike, and I respect that, but I'm looking for an opportunity where we can all live with the person, and so if it involves, I mean, if I really could. . . O'Donne1V You couldn't live with Slavin? Elliott! You folks are going t have to live with Bob who just has no concept of time. He just, it's.. .he's scary. Correia! I didn't feel that way about his presentation. I mean, I felt like, we were asking questions. He gave us the most information that we asked (unable to hear) in written format. Bailey/ I thought he was the most professional. Correia! Yeah, and then,. . and then that, the openness, I felt like Bob Slavin never once met my eyes, I wasn't sure who he was looking at. Ijust, Ijust wasn't comfortable with that, urn.. . and then maybe that's your experience in (several talking)...a male and (several talking). O'Donne1V You could turn around and we're saying we'd all be comfortable with PAR. I would.. .but Slavin, to me, did the best job. He was the most on target with what This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 64 we asked for, this is my opinion, and I just did not get that out of Bob. That's why I rated him second. Wilburn! Let's get about... Bai1ey/ No amount ofta1king will convince me. O'DonnelV No! Wilburn! Well, I'm looking at Dee, Abbie, and Connie, uh, reaction to just what you've heard from us, and then, again, looking for overlap (unable to hear). Champion! You know, I do like Slavin, but I also like PAR, and lthink it's important that all of us are happy with the decision. I think it's obviously Mike is not going to change his mind and Regenia's not going to change. So, urn, but since all of us.. .did all of us have PARas our second choice? Correia! Bob is the only one... Elliott! When he started, I had him down at number two, and I crossed him out at about. . .he has no concept of time. He has no concept of following what we have asked him to do. Champion! Oh, but I think he did have a concept of following. He did answer all the questions, and.. . and that's why it took more time. It did bother me too that he went so far over, the allotted.. . fifteen minutes. It was 25 minutes, but he also started three minutes late. (laughter and several talking) So, I'm willing to go with PAR because I think everybody can live with that. Vanderhoefl I can go with PAR. I like Bob Slavin a whole lot. Bailey/ You get to work with him in another.. . (laughter). Wilburn! Okay, urn, go ahead, Dee. Vanderhoefl The time concept is one thing, uh, Regenia may have a point, when you know Bob Slavin, what you saw today is what you get. He's very personable, and he connects well with people. If our community is looking for a more polished kind of look, which is what you brought up, Regenia, uh, and more business professional. Has nothing to do with the skills of either man. It has to do with that all of us looking through the filters, uh, and what that may look like. Uh, probably we should go with Bob.. ,(several talking), O'Donne1V .. .made the decision - it's PAR. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 65 Elliott/ I think you're hiring a semi-retired person in place of a very energetic professional, but if that's what you want to do, do it. Vanderhoef! It's not what I want to do, but what I'm trying to do with Council. I'm with Connie. I still think Slavin is best. O'DonnelV Oh, I do too! By a long shot. Vanderhoef/ I'll go with PAR. Wi1bum/ Okay. Well it sounds like the consensus is something that you can all... Bai1ey/ But if we go forward, we really have to be all on the same page. I mean, we really do, and supportive of the consultant and supportive of their ability to succeed. O'Donnell! Well, we all said that we could do that, with the exception of you, which were very uncomfortable with Slavin. Bailey/ 1...I was. It surprises me to hear that.. .Dee's comment surprised me, because I didn't, I didn't find Bob personable, and so your comment surprised me. I'm glad to know that he's a personable guy. I just didn't find it so this morning. Wilbum/ Well, the.. . (several talking)., ,00 the PAR Group is the consensus. Urn, we do need to look at just kind of our next steps, urn, we were going to have Eleanor and Sylvia, urn, contact to talk about, we do need to talk about what that participatory process might look like. Would it be helpful to give you a range of ideas about what we're looking at, or... Di1kes/ Well, I don't fee11ike Sylvia and I can do that, so I think you all are going t have to define what you want that process to be, and then.. .before we can put it into contract form. The other possibility would be for you all to have a discussion with Bob, I mean, there was some discussion about having a. . . Mejia! But didn't PAR give us a quote, for extra days? $1,000 a day (several talking at once) Di1kes/ No, I'm not talking about the money, There's two.. .I'm talking about the money, but I'm also talking about, 1 don't know what to put...1 don't know what you all want. Mejia! In terms of the process, Dilkes/ Yeah, I don't know.. . (several talking). This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 66 O'Donnell/ I have to beg out. I have to be in the Quad Cities at the airport at 1 :30. I'm fine with the choice. I'm fine with whatever Council comes up with. So... Wilburn! Thanks, Mike. Urn, well, why don't we start with what that participation might look like, just to get that. , . Elliott! To start with, I presume we're going to have some community meetings. That. . . to me that's a given. I would like to have the Council meet with a small group of people, say someone from FAIR, someone from the Chamber, some from League of Women, a group of people - not who would be equal part, but who could meet with us and uh, react with us. Bai1ey/ Meet with us or meet with the consultant? (several talking) Elliott! With us. Champion! No. They shouldn't meet with us. Bai1ey/ I mean, we'll hear from them regardless. Champion! Right. Elliott! No, because we're the ones that are going to have to, not just knowledge, skills and abilities, but what kinds of.. .ofpersonal traits are we interested in? What kinds, what kinds.. . (several talking)... Champion! The consultant will meet with us, and the consultant will meet with the public to find out what kind of traits they want. We don't have to meet with anybody. That's his job, is to develop those traits. That's their job, not ours. Elliott! Yeah! Champion! It's our job to give them our input... Elliott! Yes, Champion! .. .it's his job to get the public input. Elliott! .. .what kinds of changes are we interested.. ,are we interested in some significant change? Are we interested in some tweaks? What do we want different in this city manager than we have in our past city mangers? (several talking) Correia! The consultant's going to do that with us. They're going to (several talking). . . but in terms of it seems like in developing the recruitment profile, he has given us two options. I suppose we could think of a different option, but thee are two options that he presented, that we select community representatives, that This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15,2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 67 they meet with as a group, or we help have a town meeting where anybody comes, and they do that process there. Elliott! The only thing at a town meeting you get people, you get little accomplished at a town meeting. I would like to have a representative group of people, three, four people, who sit down with us, as... Champion! No, not with us. Elliott/ Not with the consultant, with us! We're the ones that have to decide what we're looking for, and how,. .what kinds of traits. .. Wilburn! I think what...I think all of them when they were talking to get at, is.. . you're essentially talking about a profile... Elliott! Yeah! Wilburn! .. . and they all talked about meeting with staff, meeting with council, meeting with the public, and they would gather that input for us to present to us for us to choose. Elliott! Why would you go around Robin Hood's barn to get there? Why don't we meet with them directly? What do you have against absolute, direct interaction with somebody? (several talking) Wilburn! ,.. you hire a consultant to do some of this groundwork for you. . . Correia! And I don't think three community representatives, League of Women Voters, FAIR, and who else, is representing the whole community. I think those are important, and those people should be at, if it's either selected or broad, they should be there... Bailey/ .. . already talking to people and saying, 'We need to hear, you need to tell me; you need to tell other Council Members.' I expect that that will be part of the process. Elliott/ But.. .well, that's.. .you don't get much of anything done at a public hearing. You get things done by sitting around a table and discussing, and if we don't discuss it with those people, then we.... Correia! See, you're wanting more ofa selected community representatives, that 10 to 15 people that are going to sit with a consultant, and if you wanted to go so that you're hearing it, or you could go, but that you're looking more for that select... Elliott! Well, if you want them to talk to the consultant, my thought, why talk to the consultant, the consultant tells us? rhis represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 68 Bailey/ No, we get a compiled bit of information, instead of, you know, Bob said this, Amy said this, they said generally this group, which had these members, said these things. These were the similarities... Elliott! That's fine. If you don't want to do it, that's fine. Bai1ey/ I would like a hybrid process, because...a hybrid process of these two. (several talking) Because I think that we need to identify community leaders from whom, urn, the consultant must hear, urn, and however that's done, you know, whether...I would prefer it not be one-on-one interviews - that will get expensive, but ifthat's, you know, the way that it needs to happen, and then I would like a broad community input, and then, urn, I think we need to do staff input on profile, Champion! And that's basically what he said. Bai1ey/ Right. But I think we need to have a top list. Champion! He would have.. .yeah, I think each of us should give two names. Bai1ey/ Well, I think we should give,. .these people have to have input. Champion! Right, that's what I mean. These.. ,(several talking).. .then you can add people. Vanderhoef! Many of the interviews, uh, can be done over the telephone on key people. Uh, and certainly that's the.. .key people will be more open with just a consultant than in a larger group. Bai1ey/ Absolutely! Vanderhoef! So I definitely think those have to be there. Uh, the consultant can certainly bring back, uh, without names, information, and I think we'll get more information if we're not there than if we were there, Bob. I truly believe that. Bailey/ In my experience, people are much more open to be very honest with a one-on- one with a consultant, I mean, I haven't done this kind of interviews, but... Elliott/ I don't know many people in Iowa City who are hesitant to express their views. Are you telling me that Nancy Quellhorst would refrain from expressing... Bailey/ Well, let me just say that I've heard, I mean I've not heard that she says things differently, but she speaks differently. All people speak differently in a public setting than they do one-on-one. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 69 Vanderhoef! Typically, I think what they do is...is set out a schedule of20 to 30 minute per, get these people to sign up, and come to the consultant, uh, but they get those lined up prior to coming in to town, and those are the names that.. .that we would offer to, uh, Bob, and then have him, urn, run those down, set up his own schedule, uh, certainly they don't just go 9-to-5, They start at 7:00 A.M... Bailey/ When he said 7:00 to 10:00, I thought that was a reasonable schedule. Vanderhoef! And that's true, and then still be ready for summary, um, of some of the things that they heard by the next morning. It's really intensive. Bai1ey/ Well, I don't know if that needs to. . . but I do think the hybrid of selected names, broad community process with staff, like you said, would be the best for us. Wilburn! On the front end. (several talking) Go ahead, Connie. Champion! Oh, I'm sorry. I like that idea. We have a certain number of people that we want him to talk to, uh, and they would talk to about the profile, and I think also you could ask them what their thoughts are about Iowa City. And then the challenges, and then I think I like, and he said he'd then like to meet with department heads, for the same thing, and then he said you could have a town meeting, like at the Library. I love that! I wrote that down. What a great place to haveit - a town meeting at the Library where he can get input from anybody who wants to come and speak. That could be like a two-hour evening session. Bailey/ Let's be committed to widely advertising this. Champion! Yes, and so then you would have all this input, and it certainly would be an open process, urn, so that would all be done before this was done. Uh, that would all be done, and then he would come to us and summarize, he would meet with all of us individually, by the way, and then he would summarize all this profile stuff. Bai1ey/ And then we would do a Council profile, is that when we take that information and decide what we... Champion! Yes, we would make the ultimate decision, but he would meet with us all individually, I think. I mean, he said that too. Vanderhoef! Uh-huh. Wilburn! Then we go through the process, and I'm going to throw this out, at the point where the interviews are happening, we'll see what kind of reaction we get. I did like how Cedar Rapids - they did a meet-and-greet, but they also took, you know, well, he described himself (unable to hear) here's what I thought, or dah, dah, dah. Everybody okay with that? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 70 Bai1ey/ Yeah, and I want to be clear if we're all on the same page about that, a meet-and- greet with the finalists, not with our selection, with the final candidates, so we get feedback about the final candidates. Wilburn! Right. And then we make the decision. Champion! I also did like, urn, what's her name? Andrea.., uh, suggested that if we had like a formal meeting with public, urn, that they could ask the candidates questions, and then they would write on a piece of paper pros and cons of each candidate, which they would not be shared, but they probably would share them among themselves. So... Elliott! I like that. V olland/ I think you could do that in the other scope, and in the comments put pros and cons, unless the candidates,. .if people wanted to specifically do it. Champion! They cannot rank them, that's the problem you get into. So maybe the meet- and-greet with questions, and you can make comments, is the better way to do it. I like the other way better, but I can see where it can create a mountain of problems (several talking). Bai1ey/ The one thing that 1...I wrote down is as we outline this process publicly, we have to be clear about, you know, how we're using the input and how it might not look like what you want it to look like, that we will make the final decision. So, we need some talking points to that degree. Elliott! Whoever it was said it, that whenever you ask somebody if they don't, if. . . they always say, 'You didn't listen to me.' Bai1ey/ Right. I listened to you, I took it under consideration, 1.. ,(laughter).. .did not do what you wanted. Champion! So obviously we all want some public input in this. Vanderhoef/ Oh, yeah. Elliott! But, we are agreed, it's confidential until we get to the finalists. Champion! Oh, totally, it's always confidential! Elliott! (someone speaking away from microphone) It was too confidential for you! We're.. .it's confidential until we get to the finalists. Bailey/ The short list isn't public. The final.. .the finalists list is public, the people we bring in. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 71 Di1kes/ So the 12 they bring to you is confidential. It's when you get down to the three or five or whatever. Bailey/ People we bring in, because we will do a meet-and-greet, or whatever we call it with them. Wilburn! Does that give you a better idea, Eleanor, Sylvia? Di1kes/ As I'm looking at Bob's handout, urn, we're looking at the broad community input in developing the recruitment profile, essentially, and then, urn, for the screening and selection process, we're talking about a meet-and-greet with final candidates, with some ability to fill out a questionnaire about, with comments. Bai1ey/ And we're also talking about some selected.. .um, community leaders, or opinion leaders, also. Dilkes/ I think that's included under here. Some.. .representatives of various community institutions and organizations. Bai1ey/ But I don't think that's what we meant. I don't think that we meant that they would be part ofthat broad "meeting." I think we meant for that to be a one-on- one, a phone interview. Dilkes/ No, I see those as.. .no, I understand. Those are two different, you're going to have the community-wide come and talk, and also certain identified people. Elliott! Small representative group. (several talking at once) Correia! That could be telephone, it doesn't have to be in person. Bailey/ Right. Champion! Oh, I think they'll come here for it. I think he'll come here, because he'll do a town meeting that night, and he'll spend a day here. Right, or weekend or whatever. Bai1ey/ And I actually think that that weekend thing isn't the best for this community. Doing.. . you know, like a community meeting on a Saturday? I don't think that's going to work for here. (several responding) Vanderhoefl Although when they did the, the review on, uh, urban design, that was a huge meeting on a Saturday. It didn't get to as broad a population (several talking) would be my assessment of that. Karr/ Regenia, we're not picking up anything. I mean... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 72 Bailey/ That's fine! (laughter) We were bitching about the holidays! Wilburn! Eleanor, any other thing you need to know from us? Di1kes/ I think I'm.. . Sylvia, are you okay? Okay. Wilburn! Urn. . . Champion! I think.. . should we discuss other things the consultant might need to know? I guess not. I mean, like the final candidates, if we get it down to three or four or whatever, will be bring their families here? Will that be... Bai1ey/ I'm committed to doing that. Champion! Yes, and 1.. .we don't have to discuss that now because he wouldn't be doing that, but... Wilburn! But it would be helpful to know, just going into it, I personally think, given that you may be looking at a time and life thing for wherever the person might be, that we will need to have an opportunity for them to come here to take a look and. . . Champion! Also, there might be, ifthere's a spouse that needs to be employed, we may want to,. . (several talking). Bai1ey/ I think that that's a critical part of how we approach this. Elliott! Does the University still have a trailing spouse office? I was a part of setting one up, uh, 15,20 years ago, and I forget.. .the woman who ran the office, but I haven't heard anything of it for a while, but that's.. .what was the focus of that office, was trailing spouses. Champion! Because you could lose somebody you really like, iftheir spouse cannot find (several talking). Mejia! I can check with the folks over at HR over there, if you'd like me to, and see what opportunities there would be through the University, in a formal manner. Bai1ey/ And I think when we bring in a spouse or partner or family or whatever, you know, checking with them to see what kind of things they want to see, and who they want to have contact with will help also (unable to hear) better to the community, So, you know, I think we should be very intentional about that side of it, too. Champion! That would be our second round of interviews? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 73 Vanderhoef! Yeah, when we're down to the last two or three, whatever. Elliott! And I would hope that it would be two or three, and not a whole lot of people. Dilkes/ So are you...it sounds like you're contemplating they bring you 12 or whatever. You get it down to five or six or something, and then you get, then you get it down again to two or three? Okay. Vanderhoef! Go ahead. . .let it all out there, Regenia! Champion! Anybody else have to go to the airport? (laughter) Wilburn! Any other things like that that we should touch now. I mean, we can always have another work session to, you know, if any other questions come up in conversations with Bob. Bai1ey/ We do have to figure out, or have some idea of how we're managing the media public part of this. What our talking points are, urn, who speaks about the process, what.. .what we say at what points of the process. I mean, we just agreed that the 12, you know, that's a confidential list, I mean. I think we should outline, urn... Elliott/ The project manager. Wilburn! .., process out there for everyone to see, and you stick to the process. That was one of the problems with the University, they made some promises about the process up front and changed it, and if you pick the process and everybody sees what it is, understands what it is, you know. . . Elliott! I presume you're going to be the project manager. (several talking) For the Council? Wilburn! Council talked about Sylvia being the contact with the firm, urn, making arrangements. Elliott! But there will be some times when those arrangements will require a, a political decision of some sort, and that would go to Ross. (several talking) Wilburn! I also was thinking that once we get all of this surnmed up about the process, uh, I was thinking of doing like a guest op, putting out for the public in the papers - here's the search, folks. Bailey/ And people will be asking about the timeline, and I think we have to,..I would be happier if we overestimated that, rather than being very, um, given that there are holidays, given that there's lots of things going on. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 74 Mejia! You might want to work with your consultant to come up with all of that before we start going to the public, so that you have the opportunity to meet with them, make sure that your schedule and theirs can meld, and at that time you can also determine who will be your spokesperson, whether the consultant will be releasing names, whether you'll be releasing names, what will be released and when, but that's all something that you probably want to speak with your consultant about to make sure that it's comfortable for them, as well. Wilburn! Mutual. . . Mejia! I think Eleanor has what she needs to at least get a contract. Di1kes/ And I think, I think the timeline, the issues of confidentiality - when and when things become open - will both be addressed in the contract. I mean, it seems like that's the easiest place to just do it. Urn, and so a lot ofthat, most of this, will be addressed, I think, in the contract. Wilburn! I just think it'll still be important to control, uh, how things are said in the media by a guest op or something like that. Dilkes/ Oh, no, I'm not suggesting you shouldn't do that. I'm just saying that in terms of timing, when we approve. . . you will see the draft contract at that work session before it's approved at the formal. Urn, unless you want to set a time to see and talk about it again before that. Elliott! I would like to. Correia! That would be okay with me. Di1kes/ Because we only have one, I mean, we have one meeting next week, and that's unlikely that's... Elliott! For instance, Eleanor, I'd like to think that the consultant is aware, and I would think that's the way most consultants work, that any public comment about anything regarding the search comes from our Mayor, and that the consultant does not respond to any questions from the public or the press. . Wilburn! There are some firms that do it a little differently. They.. .they... Elliott/ Well, I think we need to be clear on that. Wilburn! .. .doesn't feel.. .there's some that just do it and say that, and... Bai1ey/ We need to be clear about that though. Bob's right. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 75 Dilkes/ Well, I'm just. . .if you want to, if we want to have more conversation between you and the consultant before we finalize the contract, we're not going to get it done on August 2nd, I don't think. Karr/ October 2nd. Di1kes/ Or, October 2nd. Do you want to aim for the 15th, and have a discussion on the 2nd, and then., .or on the 1 st and go back and talk.. .ta1k to him again, or what... Champion! I don't think we need to see him until he comes to start working on this. Vanderhoef! I don't either. Bailey/ .. . (several talking) .. .like to see a draft contract before it's, before we talk about it at the work session, in case that there's questions or concerns. Correia! Well, the consultant will have to see the contract, and (several talking). Vanderhoef! I don't think I need to meet (several responding) on that draft. Just to see it. Wilburn! If you want to see the draft, is.. . are you talking beyond, ifit's tentatively to be voted on on the 2nd, on the work session, the info packet before that work session, is that sufficient time for you to look through, to ask questions, and... Bai1ey/ So the 20th work packet? (several talking) Di1kes/ See, here's my.. . dilemma. You all are talking about wanting to see the contract and have more input into it than I think is going to happen between October 1 st and when you approve it on October 2nd. So do you want to see it on October 1 st, have a discussion about it, and we go back, and we will have talked with the consultant before this, but then we go back and we do whatever changes have to be made with your input, and then we approve it formally on the 15th, or do you want to try and approve it on the 2nd? If you do there's not going to be that kind oftime for that kind of back and forth. Elliott! I don't know that we've said we want input into the contract, but we would like to see it just because if, if there are some differences or some questions about what the contract says regarding how the process will be carried out, then I think we need something more than just overnight to talk about it. You said first could you have it on the 1 st or 2nd and then. . . Karr/ Would having the agenda, I'm hearing myself, would having it on the agenda on October 2nd and the drafted contract being out to you on September 2ih, included in your agenda materials, be enough time? Champion! Yes. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15,2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 76 Elliott! Yeah, yeah. Karr/ Well, that's when it would have to be ready to be an agenda item anyway. September 2ih is the packet day. Mejia! 2ih, I thought you said 22nd. Karr/27th. (several talking) Di1kes/ That's fine, but I'm not going to have individual discussions with all of you between the time the agenda packet comes out and Monday. The first time you all are going to have a conversation among yourselves about what you want in that contract is Monday. Bailey/ October 1 st, and we'll vote on it on the 2nd. Is that what you're saying you think is too fast, Bob? Elliott/ Yes, yes, Mejia! But if the contract is acceptable, you could vote. If not, then it would have to be deferred to the following meeting. Is that acceptable? Elliott! That's fine with me. Ijust think.. .ifthere were some questions that just resolving questions on a contract overnight is not appropriate, but it might sail through. Wilburn! And if anyone has any concerns, we can (several talking and laughing). Urn, I appreciate the work everybody's done here today. These type of things can always be challenging, and urn, I think we came through this very well today. I anticipate that, you know, we'll have some rich discussions when we get the candidates, and those folks will emerge, but great job today, urn, and I'm excited about the wheels getting m<?ving! Elliott/ We thought we weren't appreciated! Bai1ey/ .. .you'll send out letters to the other firms and thank them and... Mejia! Yes, we'll have contact with them and let them know. Urn, we might want to hold offuntil we have a contract, just in the event. It's always embarrassing to have to go back and try that, but we will have some type of communication so they know where we're at. Vanderhoef! There's at least two I think,.. Karr/ Just to clarify, I am sure the media will be contacting some of you because nobody was here, and they'll want to make tomorrow's paper. So, therefore, the preferred This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007. September 15, 2007 Special City Council Work Session Page 77 firm has been selected, and staff will begin negotiations, will be our, . . yep. Preferred (several talking). Elliott! In other words, we're not naming. I'll be happy to say... Karr/ No, no, the preferred firm has been selected as the PAR Group. It's a public meeting, I just want to clarify. Elliott! But are we going to refer them to Ross? (several talking) Karr/ But I'm just saying, staff may get calls and since it's a public meeting, I typically would not refer them to the Mayor. If it's a public meeting, they can have the whole tape. Elliott! Okay, that's fine. Correia! So the preferred firm, the PAR Group, has been selected. Weare beginning contract negotiations with them. Wilburn! Yep. (several talking and laughing) Okay, thanks a lot everybody. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the special Iowa City City Council work session meeting of September 15, 2007.