Council needn’t rush

We can scarcely envision a worse time for the Baker City Council to make the vital choice confronting its seven members.

Councilors need to hire a city manager.

The manager’s duties include such important things as ensuring the city doesn’t spend more money than the taxpayers can afford, and supervising city employees.

Selecting a city manager, then, is a decision best made when all seven councilors agree on the most qualified candidate.

Unfortunately, the current Council, during the past 2fi months, has argued about as much as it has agreed.

Even more troubling is that the source of this discord, which has played out during public meetings and in e-mails and on the Opinion page of this newspaper, is the very matter that now confronts councilors: the employment of the city manager.

Four of the seven councilors — Dennis Dorrah, Beverly Calder, Clair Button and Aletha Bonebrake — voted on June 9 to fire manager Steve Brocato.

Their three colleagues — Andrew Bryan, Milo Pope and Sam Bass — think that was a mistake.

They not only voted against the motion to fire Brocato, but each has helped with the campaign to force a recall election of Dorrah and Calder this fall.

Yet the Council’s timeline calls for making a job offer, to one of the 75 candidates who applied to replace Brocato, by mid-October.

That’s an ambitious plan, considering the rancor that has infected the Council since June 9.

Too ambitious, depending on how the recall campaign goes.

We implore councilors to resist the temptation to stick to a rigid schedule. Their willingness to be flexible, and to avoid haste, will be especially valuable if the recall election happens.

Our biggest worry here is not that councilors are incapable of temporarily suspending their animosity and working together to find the best person to manage the city on behalf of their constituents.

The real problem, rather, is that no matter how convincing a display of camaraderie the Council can muster, we doubt the city manager candidates will feel confident about the stability of this job. If that’s so, the city might not get the best person available.

This dilemma is especially acute if the Council offers the job just a few weeks before voters decide whether to remove Dorrah and Calder from office.

This could happen.

The Council’s goal of choosing a manager in mid-October is reasonable only if the recall campaigners fail to gather enough signatures, by a mid-September deadline, to force an election.

If they fail, we hope the energy pushing the recall effort will dissipate, allowing councilors to concentrate, as October arrives, on picking the best manager.

But if the recall proponents do gather the required 603 signatures by mid-September, then the election probably would take place in late October or early November.

Which means that in mid-October, when the Council intends to make a job offer, the recall campaign will probably dominate public discussion in town.

That’s not the time for councilors — two of them facing removal from office as a result of a campaign that three of their colleagues contributed to — to be welcoming a new city manager.

Look at the situation from a candidate’s perspective: Would you accept a job if two of your seven bosses — the only seven people who have a vote on whether you keep your job — might be recalled before you ever walk into your office on the second floor of City Hall?

There is, fortunately, no reason for councilors to rush.

Interim City Manager Tim Collins has done the job before. He also worked for the city for more than 30 years in various capacities, including city attorney and public works director.

He’s capable of running the city for a few more months.