Council may hire another search agency for city manager search

ROCHESTER — The recent search for a new city manager did not go as planned for the city of Rochester, leaving the City Council somewhat divided on how to move forward in finding a permanent replacement.

Earlier this year, the Rochester City Council hired GovHR USA for the task, at a cost of approximately $8,000, plus around $2,500 in advertising expenses. Tecumseh City Manager Dan Swallow was one of three finalist candidates — including current city of Rochester Finance Director Anthony Moggio and Mike Greene, who most recently served as the assistant city manager in St. Clair Shores — and Swallow reportedly turned down the job after being selected.

Since then, Nik Banda — who had been serving as the interim city manager — was named the new official city manager of the city of Rochester for a period of one year, ending Aug. 23, 2023.

“Nik wants to retire within a year — so he says now — so it is incumbent upon us to find a new city manager. We can’t wait until one day before Nik retires. We need to be planning for a search,” Mayor Stuart Bikson said.

During the Sept. 26 City Council meeting, a majority of the council voted to consider hiring a search firm in six months to start a new city manager search.

“I would like, in six months’ time, that we have, on a council agenda, an opportunity to approve and support a firm to find our next city manager,” Council member Steve Sage said during the meeting.

Sage’s motion passed 5-2, with Council members Mark Albrecht and Ann Peterson dissenting.

Rather than spending more money on a second search firm, Albrecht and Peterson said the administration should focus on developing a succession plan for the position and suggested that Banda and others in the administrative team make a recommendation on how to best move forward in finding a replacement.

“I don’t want to engage another agency, to spend money like we did, which really didn’t work for this prior city manager search,” Albrecht said. “I’d rather ask the administration to come to us with a succession planning plan for, not only the city manager position … but other positions on city administration that we need to get some bench strength going,” said Albrecht.

“I happen to agree,” Peterson added. “We’ve already spent the money to do that, and we did not follow that process. I would prefer to see this city administration and our newly elected city manager be the one to determine how to move this city forward. He knows it better than anyone.”

Council member Douglas Gould said he would prefer to vet as many candidates as possible — both internal and external — for the position, adding that he is also in favor of succession planning.

“I can’t imagine narrowing our search pool to 20-30 people for a job as important as this,” Gould stated. “And I would hope that, through the mentorship that would happen throughout this year, that we would have extremely qualified (internal) candidates that could compete with anybody that this outside firm would be able to bring in.”

Mayor Pro Tem Nancy Salvia also voted in favor of looking into hiring another search firm.

“I will support the motion, but only on the basis that I believe we need to address what failed in the process that last time. That’s my real intent there. I’m OK with hiring another outside search firm — I don’t know if it needs to be six months or eight months or nine months or two months — but we really need to address what in our process failed,” she said.

Banda said he has already had discussions with the administrative team to identify what went wrong with the last search process.

“I think that we, through me, can tell you what went wrong and how we can do it better so it’s not uncomfortable for you, for staff or for anybody. We already made a matrix of where we disconnected, the city side and the council side,” he said.

Banda also noted that he already started the succession planning process a month ago and has begun sending his staff to conferences and other educational opportunities as they arise to help them further their educations and careers.

If need be, City Attorney Jeffrey Kragt said there is some flexibility in Banda’s contract, which was approved with a 7-0 vote.

“It is definitely a one-year agreement, but we wanted to add the flexibility, if City Council and Mr. Banda wants to extend it for whatever reason, then we wouldn’t have to have another agreement prepared. It would just continue,” said Kragt.

Bikson said it is incumbent on council to hire a long-term city manager and that council is doing exactly what it should.

“This is our main role as a (City) Council, to hire a city manager, and we need to be planning for it,” he said.