City decides to hire municipal league to help in search
By Austen Smith, Editor
PUBLISHED: April 17, 2008
City Council members agreed last Monday night to continue the search for a city manager after it was suggested by Belleville Mayor Richard Smith that the city wait to restart the search until after the summer months.
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The city of Belleville continues to struggle with replacing former city manager Walter Mears, who was fired last August over a controversy regarding his lack of educational credentials. City Clerk Diana Kollmeyer has been the acting city manager ever since Mears's termination.
City officials have conducted three searches and have come up empty handed each time. An administrative assistant from Illinois, Eric Wiederhold, marks the latest rejection as he cited personal reasons for not taking the position. For his travel costs, the city reimbursed Wiederhold $404.
Instead of going back to the well for a fourth time, city officials decided to hire the Michigan Municipal League to headhunt candidates for the position, which has been advertised as a negotiable $62,000 annual salary. It was reported, however, that Smith offered Wiederhold more salary to take the job.
Councilman Rick Dawson reflected the opinions of most of the other council members by saying, "We need help."
"There are things not getting done in this city. We need a quarterback for this team," Dawson said. "We have looked and we have not been successful."
Councilman Brian Blackburn echoed comments made by Dawson saying that the city shouldn't wait for the pool of candidates to regenerate after several months, as was suggested by Smith.
"(Kollmeyer) and the staff have been through a lot, we need to find somebody now," he said.
Councilman George Chedraue was still not convinced that the MML was the right way to go, despite voting along with rest of Council to approve the contracting of their headhunting services. Chedraue said he was afraid the city was "rushing" in order just to find somebody for the position and not necessarily the right person.
"I think we need to have a very diligent search and not hire just anybody," Chedraue said.
When asked whether the city should wait or start searching again right away, Kollmeyer said day-to-day city business is running smoothly for the most part, but there are a number of expertise areas that she cannot accommodate.
"We do have to go to the city attorney quite a bit," she said.
Kollmeyer added that she too would not like to see Council hire a person just to have a warm body in the position.
"We're a family here. We need the right person, not just any person," she said.
Department of Public Services Director Keith Boc said the summer always is the city's busy season. He said without a city manager in place, he lately has had to dedicate a lot of his time to residents coming with complaints.
"My whole day sometimes is being taken up by that. I don't see the advantage of sitting around," Boc said.
The motion to approve the MML passed unanimously.
For more information on the city of Belleville, visit the Web site www.belleville-mi.us or call 697-9323.
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