Search Starts for New City Manager

The City Council voted to release requests for a proposal last week for professional executive recruiting firms, formally beginning its search to hire a permanent city manager.
Requests for proposal, or RFPs, invite companies to submit proposed prices for specific jobs based on parameters set by the government agency. Cindy Collins, who has served as the interim city manager since John Schaefer retired in June, will not seek the job permanently.
Collins told the City Council at the Jan. 11 meeting that she expected to bring a recommended firm for its approval at the Feb. 24 study session. Once a firm is selected, it would begin its search for candidates to have the city interview.
Collins said when all was said and done, she expected a candidate to be hired around June.
Councilman Dr. Allan Yung, who served as last year’s mayor, praised Collins for the work she did to keep the city’s operations steady.
“We had a lot of changeover, and you really handled it well,” he said.
Collins said she expected use of the recruiting firm to cost $25,000-$30,000.
In other business, the City Council approved a renegotiated agreement with the Los Angeles County Fire Department that will bring some additional revenue to the San Marino Fire Department.
Fire Chief Mario Rueda explained his department has had an exchange of services agreement with the county since 1992, specifically for its District 5 area between San Marino and Arcadia. However, with San Marino’s additional exchange of service agreements with other cities, the County has not sent units into San Marino very often in recent years, Rueda said.
“It just got to be so one-sided that it wasn’t a good deal for San Marino,” Rueda said. “We haven’t been billing anybody since essentially 1992.”
Now, the County’s fire department will pay $455 each time SMFD sends an ambulance into that county area as compensation.
There also was an update on an ad hoc committee’s look at other city operations. Collins said she would provide the City Council an evaluation of the committee report that investigated how several of the city’s departments operate and offered recommendations to make them more efficient. She expected to have that available by the first February meeting.
The committee was formed last year.