The Searchers

Ending the culture of delay could result in some delay.

We ask for your patience. Your city is very important to us. Please hold for the next available manager.

Maybe you're wondering how that city manager search is going. Me, too. I made a few calls.

On Monday, the City Council's personnel committee, affectionately known as the Ron (Corbett) Squad, could have a job description typed up for the post Jim Prosser vacated last month. Or it could be a week from Monday. Maybe.

These things take time, because not everyone agrees on what makes a perfect city manager. Some imagine a prince from the private sector riding in to make bureaucracy purr like an entry in the Fortune 500.

Others wish to snag a successful city manager from a bustling burg, like that dreamy Mike Van Milligan, who helped make Dubuque the envy of Iowa municipalities.

Mayor Corbett is talking hybrid. He's thinking of a local business type to take the helm for 24 to 30 months, someone who can rev up the city's job-creation prospects. Corbett also would hire an assistant manager with a more conventional government resume to run day-to-day operations. And after a couple of years, the deputy gets a promotion.

In the meantime, Corbett says the city may hire an interim manager. He will attach no names to any of these plans, before it's time.

That's a lot of activity, considering we don't even have a job description. Vernon says the initial search will look at Iowa candidates. The city's human resources department can help, maybe. Its director, Connie Huber, has said she doesn't have the kind of network a professional search firm would have.

Council member Kris Gulick has argued a search firm might be a good idea. But the Ron Squad's not down with that. Why hire a firm when the right candidate could be with us all the while? Then, as Survivor sang, the search is over.

Maybe the council will lead the search. Perhaps it also can do background checks and negotiate pay. Maybe. Perhaps.

It's possible the council doesn't know what it's doing and there's a fiasco waiting just around the bend. Or, it could be that it's tough to create what looks like a process but is really a road map to a known destination. I'm thinking mostly door No. 2, with a dash of fiasco stirred in.

I can't help feeling the same way I do when I see a repairman in my house surrounded by parts of an expensive appliance, or when I'm wheeled into an operating room and look at all the instruments and machines.

I sure hope you folks know what you're doing.

n Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@gazcomm.com