Two firms made the list of majority of commissioners
During a 35-minute discussion on July 7, the Sarasota city commissioners voted unanimously to ask City Auditor and Clerk Shayla Griggs and City Attorney Joe Polzak to send requests for proposals to three of the six firms that had responded to a city notice regarding the search for a new city manager.
The commission meeting this week was the first held since the board’s summer recess ended on June 30.
The commissioners also settled on specific additional information that they want the firms to provide them.
The three firms are Slavin Management Consultants of Norcross, Ga.; Sumter Local Government Consulting of Atlanta; and MGT Impact Solutions of Tampa.
The majority of the board members noted their interest in Slavin and Sumter.
Additionally, at the commissioners’ request, Polzak said he would make certain that the letter he and Griggs will send to the three firms will ask them for specific information that the board members discussed that morning:
- Will the firm offer a guarantee?
- Who would comprise the firm’s search team?
- How many other searches does the firm anticipate handling at the same time as the search for a new Sarasota city manager?
- The firms should offer details about their experience searching for managers for Florida cities.
- More details should be provided about each firm’s direct sourcing of candidates.
- Each firm should include its anticipated expense of the search.
- Each should include details about the size of its candidate pool for Florida city searches.
- Each firm should provide information about whether it would conduct its search on a national basis.
- Representatives of each firm should watch the videos of the segments of the recent City Commission meetings during which the board members discussed their key criteria for a new city manager and provide a restatement of that criteria in the firms’ responses.
Commissioner Kathy Kelley Ohlrich had asked for the inclusion of the key criteria the board members had discussed.
“As long as it’s put in writing,” Mayor Liz Alpert stressed, so the firms would have a clear understanding of the attributes.
Alpert was participating in the July 7 meeting via Zoom.
City Auditor and Clerk Griggs said she would compile the list of criteria from each board member.
“Excellent,” Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch responded after Polzak completed reciting the list.
Although he also initially included a question regarding each firm’s proximity to Sarasota, Vice Mayor Debbie Trice — who was presiding during the July 7 meeting — asked that the companies clarify their proximity to the city in the context of how much they expect their management of the search would cost.
After the commission receives the responses, Trice said, the board members could decide who will conduct the interviews of the firm’s representatives and how those interviews would be handled.
Based on prior board discussions, Griggs pointed out that the interviews would be conducted publicly, in an effort to make the process as transparent as possible.
During discussions in May, board members bemoaned the fact that they had not taken care to make certain that the search for a new city manager had been conducted publicly. That was they major reason they cited for halting the search at that point, which had been handled by Colin Baenziger & Associates of Daytona Beach Shores.
Griggs also told the commissioners on July 7 that she and Polzak “plan on having a standing item” about the search process on each City Commission agenda, starting with the first meeting in August. She noted that since the deadline for agenda items for their July 21 regular meeting was last week, it likely would be early August before she and Polzak had much of an update for the commissioners.
Narrowing the field
Early on during the discussion, Griggs explained that each firm that responded to the city’s Letter of Interest — which staff sent to the companies listed on the Florida Local Government Executive Search Firm master list — was asked to provide supplemental responses.
The backup materials for the agenda item also made it clear that Griggs and Polzak are using the Florida City/County Manager Search Guide in their efforts on behalf of the City Commission.
(In May, after the board members voted to begin the search anew, with a new firm, they tasked Griggs and Polzak with leading the effort, instead of city Human Resources Director Stacie Mason and her staff.)
“I was very pleased by the … supplemental responses,” Commissioner Ahearn-Koch said.
“One thing that was really important,” she continued, was that two of the six firms guaranteed that if a candidate they produced were hired and that person left the city’s employment within two years, the firms would launch a new search with payment sought only for that new initiative.
Those firms were Slavin and Sumter, The Sarasota News Leader learned from a review of the materials they submitted to city staff.
Ahearn-Koch then pointed out that she would want to know from any firm that she and her colleagues were to consider for hiring whether it would be able to provide details about who among its staff would be on the search team. She also expressed a desire to learn the number of other clients the firm would expect to be working for at the same time as its work for the City of Sarasota.
She further noted, “It looks like a lot of them [that responded to the letter] have experience in Florida.”
Yet another issue she emphasized is how each firm develops its list of proposed candidates.
For example, in his June 3 response to the city letter, Slavin President Robert E. Slavin wrote, “We do not use the same cadre of candidates repeatedly. We have no allegiances that preclude our total objectivity respective of any candidate.”
During the July 7 discussion, Ahearn-Koch also pointed out that one firm reported having a 95% retention rate for the candidates it places in positions.
That firm also was Slavin. The relevant portion of Slavin’s letter said, “More than 95 percent of our placements during the past five years are still in their same positions.”
Ahearn-Koch told her colleagues she already was inclined to put Slavin and Sumter at the top of her prospective hiring list, based on their two-year guarantee.
However, she added, the expense of hiring a firm is “the big one” for consideration, in her view.
“I noted proximity to Sarasota as a cost-reducing factor,” Ohlrich said.
Later, Trice told her colleagues that her review of best practices for a city manager search found a recommendation for the narrowing of the number of potential firms to two or three.
Ohlrich responded that she felt three would be a good number.
Her top three of the six, she continued, were MGT, Sumter and Renee Narloch & Associates of Tallahassee.
Ahearn-Koch named Slavin, Sumter and Strategic Government Resources (SGR), which is based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas.
Alpert told her colleagues that she wanted to narrow the list to four firms: Slavin, MGT, Strategic Government Resources and Sumter.
Commissioner Kyle Battie said he found Slavin and Sumter to be “a bit more [thorough]” in their responses.
Trice announced that Slavin and Norlock were her top two firms.
In regard to Sumter, she added, “I was concerned about it being too Florida-centric.”
Given all the board members’ remarks, Trice said, it appeared to her that Sumpter and Slavin were “head and shoulders [above the rest].”
Alpert suggested that the commissioners request more details from the five firms that had been mentioned during the discussion.
However, Ohlrich, Battie and Ahearn-Koch proposed that the board settle on three, though Battie later said perhaps four should be chosen.
Although MGT and Strategic Government Resources (SGR) also had been named during the discussion, Trice noted, she had eliminated them from her list of options. Of SGR, she said, “I didn’t think they were going to be as focused on transparency as we needed.” In regard to MGT, she added, “I thought [it] might be weaker in national recruitment.”
Alpert noted that two of the board members had mentioned SGR.
Then Ohlrich pointed out, “The more proposals we have, the more difficult it will be for us to decide.” Referring to Slavin and Sumter, she added, “We have two really strong candidates.”
Nonetheless, Trice suggested that MGT be included on the list.
Ohlrich ended up making the motion to request more information from Slavin, Sumter and MGT, and Battie seconded it.
At one point during the discussion, Battie inquired as to whether the commissioners could change the language in the City Charter so a new manager could live in an unincorporated area of Sarasota County, close to the city.
The Charter specifies that each of the three city Charter officials — the city auditor and clerk, the city attorney, and the city manager — have to reside within the city limits.
A referendum would be necessary to amend the Charter, Griggs responded.
Trice then noted that some local governments “add a living bonus to the contract” for a potential new manager who has concerns about the expense of purchasing a home in the jurisdiction where the manager will serve.