06/08/2006: "EDITORIAL - Who Will They Choose?"

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(The Management Team panel prepares to start a day of interviews)

After a full day of interviews by two panels, one made-up of elected officials and the other comprised of citizens hand-picked by the Council, the recommendations of the two panels have been made, and now the Council will once again go into executive session to receive and review the rankings from the panels, and to continue the "evaluation of the qualifications of candidates for employment", and hopefully to make a decision on which of the four will be the County Administrator.

We spent the day observing the interviews, and went away impressed by the overall quality of the candidates. All four of them were obviously intelligent, seemingly open and candid in their responses to the questions posed to them, and all displayed a sense of humor, be it intellectual or dry. And all four seemed to have done their homework. While Richard Grout (Director of the Bellingham Field Office Department of Ecology, and a former Planning Director of SJ County) had no need to do research on San Juan County, he did tell the panel members that he had called department heads -including County Administrator pro tem David Goldsmith, to sound them out on various issues. The other three candidates showed a knowledge and familiarly with current issues in the County that, had one not know better, would have indicated they must have spent some quality time here.

The process the panels followed were to ask all the candidates the same questions, and then with follow-up questions attempt to clarify and draw out additional information. For the most part the questions and responses were pat, and what one would expect. There were questions about "what is your style of leadership?; "What would be your priorities?", and some questions specific to a current county problem, of how to recruit and retain employees.

After the end of the requisite Q & A, things opened up a bit as the candidates would volunteer information and opinions. A comment made by Mr. Grout to both panels seemed to be unexpected, and resulted in additional conversation, when Grout informed them that he had told Waldron & Company that he had no interest in being a budget "wonk", and that he "did not want to managing a budget all the time.. having a Budget Manger position would allow the County Administrator time to create a County Vision". In further discussion of the topic, Grout said that some restructuring of departments may be in order, but there are turf issues, so the departments must be involved in the process.

As for the other three candidates, working with a budget seemed to be of little concern to them, and was not a subject much discussed. In some ways they struck us as being very similar, but as the interviews went on, some personality differences became obvious to us.

Lloyd Halverson (Camas, WA) was very soft spoken, and very thoughtful in his responses. Toward the end of the interview with the Citizen Panel, the topic of "civility" came up, and Mr. Halverson paused, and then softly said "Civility is very important to me….".

Pete Rose seemed to have done the most research on the County, and one could tell that he was hitting the right chord with the Citizen Panel when he showed an interest and expertise in providing affordable housing, telling them that he was a board member of a housing group, and that in his current position at Woodinville he had worked to create an affordable housing complex of 2,500 units. Rose also seemed to be the more politically attuned than the others; which may or may not be a good thing.

From our limited view point, the most purely professional candidate was Mark Weinberg, who recently retired as the City Administrator of Inglewood, CA, and had that crisp quick intellect and energy that is not uncommon to people in charge; and we also noted a dry humor that both he and Grout shared.

The Council has their work cutout for them on this one, and we are fortunate to have a good slate for them to choose from.