City Council to interview four city manager finalists next week

The Council’s schedule calls for all the interviews to be done during executive sessions, which are closed to the public.

Oregon’s public meetings law allows city councils to discuss certain topics during executive sessions, although councilors can’t legally make a final decision — including deciding who they want to offer a job to — during such sessions.

The section of the public meetings law the Council is citing is 192.660(2)(a), which allows executive sessions “to consider the employment of a public officer, employee, staff member or individual agent.”

Collins, who’s also the retired city attorney, said the public meetings law does require the City Council to allow the public to comment before councilors actually hire the new manager.

 Collins said the Council probably won’t schedule a public meeting for that purpose until the week of Nov. 16-20 at the soonest.

Following are brief outlines of the four candidates:

• Strahl is the city manager in Menominee, Mich.

• Hulse is a managing consultant for Belize Real Estate Development Group LLC in Florida, and a former deputy city manager in Cocoa, Fla.

• Patrick worked as city manager in Kalispell from November 2004 to October 2008

• Johnson is a consultant and assistant to the city manager of San Diego.