Council Postpones City Manager Decision to Mull Split Opinion

Hopkins City Council members decided to take a little bit longer to ponder the strengths of the six city manager finalists—citing the strong pool of candidates and differences between council and staff over who stood out.

Council met Friday afternoon after the candidates concluded several rounds of group interviews with city staff, department heads and former city leaders followed by interviews with council members. Council could have voted to extend an offer to one of the finalists. It could also have selected a limited number to return for further interviews.

But votes from a straw poll of the council’s top three picks were evenly split between four of the six finalists.

At first glance, the remaining two candidates were more clear-cut, with one finalist receiving no votes and the other receiving votes from all five council members. But even this complicated matters because council members' impressions differed starkly from the impressions of city staff, department heads and former city leaders.

The candidate without any council votes received the most positive comments during the group interviews, while the one with the most council votes did the worst at connecting with interviewers during the group interviews. Jim Brimeyer, senior advisor with the firm guiding the city manager search, said he hadn’t seen such a split in his decades of experience.

(Hopkins Patch is not specifying how each candidate fared because the selection process is a personnel decision that is still underway.)

That doesn’t mean the split is inscrutable. Search firm president Richard Fursman noted that the candidate who failed to connect is a polar opposite from previous City Manager Rick Getschow on a personality test. While Getschow was extroverted, this candidate is more introverted.

Although that difference isn’t necessarily bad, change isn’t always welcomed either. And city employees who would work with a city manager on a daily basis could be more sensitive to this difference than council members who see the city manager less and are focused more on experience and big-picture issues.

Council members will ultimately have the final say, but the split is significant enough that they wanted to explore the differences further. They’ll talk in more detail with people who participated in the group interviews to ferret out the true reasons behind the different impressions. They’ll also take personality tests of their own to help them understand how character traits influence perceptions.

On Tuesday, they’ll reconvene to discuss how to proceed.

Despite that difference, council members agreed that they had a strong pool of candidates, each of whom could probably do the job. The tight race doesn’t make their job any easier, though.

“I’m not saying I’m wishy-washy because they’re leaps and bounds better,” said Councilman Rick Brausen. “I’m saying this is a tough decision.”

***

to see a video of the six city manager candidates.

to see their biographical details.