Council could hire manager this week

The Baker City Council is expected to move a step closer to hiring a city manager when councilors convene for a special meeting Thursday morning at City Hall.

The 9 o’clock meeting includes an executive session during which councilors will review information from background checks completed on the two finalists — Tim W. Johnson of Portland and Clarence Hulse of Cocoa, Fla.

Johnson is the Council’s first choice.

Following the executive session, which is closed to the public, the Council will reconvene in public session during which Mayor Dennis Dorrah said he expects councilors will decide whether to offer the job.

Any such offer, he said, would be contingent on comments the Council’s receives during a public meeting tentatively scheduled for noon Friday at City Hall.

“Hopefully, we as a group are going to decide on a new city manager,” Dorrah said.

“That’s the plan. We are doing everything right down the line according to all the state regulations, but at some point you’ve got to make some commitment to the guy to see if he is still interested.

Dorrah said the process of hiring a city manager to replace Steve Brocato, whom the Council fired on June 9 by a 4-3 vote, has taken longer than he and Tim Collins, city manager pro-tem, had anticipated.

“The biggest problem for me has been that is has taken so long, basically since October, to get everyone, all the candidates and all of the councilors together,” Dorrah said.

“We had a difficult time getting everyone out here for the candidate visits. That delayed things a couple of weeks,” and Dorrah said the background checks also “took longer than we anticipated, due to vacations, hunting season, Thanksgiving and everything.”

Dorrah said he and Collins had expected the new city manager would be on the job by the first or second week of December.

Now, Dorrah said if the Council offers the job and it is accepted by one of the finalists this week, it could take several more weeks before the new city manager is on the job.

“We can’t approve them one day and expect to have them show up the next day, especially with Christmas lurking around the corner, and New Year’s,” Dorrah said. “I’m hoping to have the new city manager here for the first Council meeting in January. That would be wonderful, but it will depend on their situation.”