By Seth Schmidt
The City of Tracy’s search for a new administrator is about to be put on the front burner again.
Monday, the council reviewed a proposed timeline that would seek new applications in April, conduct interviews and select finalists in May, and strive to have a new administrator on the job by June 11.
Wendell Sande of the South Central Service Cooperative, who has been hired to coordinate the city’s administrator search, drafted the timetable.
Public Works Director Shane Daniels has been serving as interim administrator since the resignation of Madonna Peterson in September. Councilman Tony Peterson expressed some urgency Monday night to find a permanent administrator.
“I want to keep on top of this because Shane is getting ready to roll into his busy seasons,” said Peterson.
Daniels, when he accepted the additional city administrator responsibilities, said he’d be able to handle the added workload over winter, but would have a more difficult time when spring arrived.
The council began advertising its city administrator vacancy last fall, but Sande told the council in October that he didn’t consider any of the 13 initial applicants to have the necessary qualifications for the position. A second application period was opened, with hopes that interviews could be held in December, and a new administrator hired in January. But Sande later recommended that the administrator search be suspended until spring, after only a limited number of applications were received.
The short tenure of the last city administrator, and a Feb. 13 council recall vote, Sande indicated, had likely raised questions in the minds of some potential candidates and resulted in fewer applications than normally could have been expected.
For more on this article, see this week’s Headlight-Herald.