Search for city manager narrows

The Sonoma City Council will interview six finalists for city manager during an all-day session on Oct. 25.
City Manager Mike Fuson, who announced his retirement last May, said the finalists have been winnowed from a candidate pool of 56. All the finalists are from Northern California and all are currently employed in key local government positions. Most are women, according to sources close to the process.
The council earlier this year hired Bob Murray & Associates of Roseville to conduct the search for a new city manager.
Fuson said in an interview Friday that he expected the council would have selected a new city manager within the first two weeks of November. He said even if a candidate gets the nod during the Oct. 25 meeting it could take sometime after that to work out a contract with the person.
Fuson makes $135,000 a year and it is expected that a new city manager will make more. Also likely to be negotiated is a housing allowance, which is typically sought to defer the high cost of housing in the North Bay. All of this could take some time, he said.
City council member Ken Brown said that selecting a manager is one of the most important decisions — if not the most important — made by the council. In many other communities, councils appoint fire and police chiefs as well as city managers. In Sonoma, the city manager is it, the only local government position appointed by the council.
City council member August Sebastiani said the search for a new city manager “is a really exciting project to work on.“
It provides, he said, the council “with the opportunity to put a stamp on the city and how it is run for longer than potentially any of our terms.”
He said he was very encouraged by the fact that 56 candidates had applied for the job.
In business, he said, it is all about “recruitment and retention. What this (the number of candidates) says about our community is terribly encouraging.”
Brown also was encouraged by the search process thus far, as well as its potential outcome.
“Sonoma has been especially blessed with two wonderful city managers during my term in office, Mike Fuson and Pam Gibson,” said Brown. “I know we will pick a person who is right for the city and for the city government staff.”