Council to hire firm, debates charter amendment in city manager search

EASTPOINTE — After Eastpointe’s city manager left for a new job with the city of Ann Arbor March 6, the Eastpointe City Council has been working to move forward with the search for a replacement.

At its April 15 meeting, City Council discussed the method of the search — either hiring a firm to perform the search, or letting the city’s human resources office do it. Council members also asked whether or not to allow the Michigan Municipal League to perform the search.

Interim City Manager Elke Doom said that if the city puts out a request for proposals, the MML would likely submit through that.

The MML has retired city managers who would assist in the search, Doom said. While she said that there are good companies that could conduct the search, it can be an expensive option.

“They’re not inexpensive, so when you get those RFPs, you’ll have to take a look if you feel comfortable spending $20,000 to $40,000, or $50,000,” she said.

Doom said that while there are options and each has positive aspects, it’s important that the City Council knows what its looking for in a candidate. Once a firm is hired, it will meet with City Council to determine what its members are looking for and will present the best candidates.

Eastpointe Mayor Michael Klinefelt said he preferred to do an RFP to find a firm to conduct the search.

“They might try to upsell us. We just need basic posting, promoting, background checks and basically collecting all the data for us to go through,” he said.

While he disagreed with the decision to put out an RFP, Councilman Rob Baker said he wasn’t going to argue it.

“I was looking for more in-house,” he said. “That was just my preference, but I’m not going to argue about it.”

In the end, Council voted 3-1 to put out an RFP. Baker voted against it, and Councilman Harvey Curley was absent.

 

Council weighing charter amendment to widen search
While the decision to put out an RFP didn’t require much debate, discussion regarding a change to the city’s charter was tabled for a future meeting.

Currently the charter states that the city manager will have at least one year of experience as a manager or assistant city manager in a city or village. The proposed change requires a city manager to have two years of experience in municipal management.

Baker said he’s concerned that the proposed change to the terminology would allow unqualified applicants to apply.

“I think what we can run into is, you can have somebody who is in a management position but that doesn’t necessarily manage people or budgets or a city budget, and I think that some caution would have to be had,” he said.

As an example, Baker said a candidate who has municipal management experience may apply, but the department they manage might be a department of only one or two people.

Councilman Cardi Demonaco Jr. said that with the current wording, the city couldn’t hire Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel. He said St. Clair Shores also uses the terms “municipal management” in its charter, which he agrees with.

“Right now we can’t even hire our county executive because he hasn’t been a city manager or assistant city manager or village manager, so I thought (this change) at least opens it up,” he said.

Klinefelt said the current wording prohibits qualified candidates.

“We have this sort of antiquated charter provision that prohibits us from looking at good candidates because city managers, they’re sparse in Michigan. … We have a charter that requires that you need someone who’s been a manager to come here and it precludes a lot of candidates from getting into the field,” he said.

Doom, who previously served as Eastpointe’s city manager, said specifying a city or village might mean something else to an out-of-state candidate.

“If you go to states like Illinois, villages are not villages like we know them,” she said. “They could be 100,000 people; it depends on the state.”

In the end, it was decided to put off the discussion for a future meeting. However, Baker said he didn’t feel bad debating the terminology.

“If I’m hung up on one spot of wording, one weak link can break a chain,” he said. “Just because it’s one little spot doesn’t mean that it can’t have great impact, be it positive or negative.”

The discussion is expected to be on the agenda at City Council’s May 6 meeting. If approved, the charter amendment will be sent to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office for review so it can be put on the ballot for residents to vote on in November.