By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews
YACHATS – The next full-time Yachats city manager needs to be a good communicator and facilitator who is in step with the environmental and cultural sensitivity the town prides itself on.
Those were crucial qualities the mayor and two council members stressed to Jensen Strategies staff as they reviewed the documents the Portland-based recruiting firm had drafted in preparation for taking the job advertisement public.
Besides making sure the spirit of a job brochure aligned with Yachats values, the council and two city staff members went through the minutia of verbiage for the requirements of the job during a special council work session Wednesday evening. Jensen staff and mayor Craig Berdie attended via Zoom.
The number of job requirements and attributes listed in the ad was daunting and seemed to include everything but the ability to walk on water — a point noted by interim city manager Rick Sant. The attributes and requirements incorporated into the draft were gleaned from a survey Jensen conducted in the community.
“This person is expected to know everything about everything,” Sant said. “I can’t imagine you ever finding somebody with this skill set. If you do, God bless you, pay them whatever they want because they are made out of gold. I couldn’t come close to getting this job.”
The proposed job posting describes a “command and control position” which is at odds with what is actually wanted and is exactly what has not worked for Yachats in the past, he said.
“What I think you need is a facilitator that understands cross-functional workflow and how to create dynamic self-directed work teams,” said Sant, a Yachats resident and retired newspaper executive who became Yachats’ third interim manager in late May.
Previous command-and-control managers only alienated the town’s committees, commissions, volunteers and council, which created separate “silos” instead of a cohesive team, said Sant.
The city has struggled to attract and retain managers since a changeover in the council helped lead to the departure of Shannon Beaucaire in 2021. There were two interim managers after that and then the hiring of first-time manager Heide Lambert of Waldport, who left in May after 15 months.
Sant added that Yachats’ secret weapon is its volunteers and that city staff alone can’t possibly tackle all the projects coming down the pike. And yet, he said, the skillset presented in the brochure is going to attract a candidate who is going to “tell you the way the world works.”
“I look at my job as I’m the facilitator,” Sant said. “I don’t really do much of anything. I’m the servant of the commissions and committees and the citizens,”
Councilor Catherine Whitten-Carey agreed with Sant’s assessment, adding that job description listed “too many jobs or experiences for one person to have” and that the city “needs someone strong” but “highly willing to facilitate and rely on others and learn.”
“Yeah, maybe 5 percent of that (job description) I could do, the way this is written,” Sand said. “I’d look at that and go ‘I got no chance.’”
“That’s also what I wrote (down),” Whitten-Carey said. “Nobody is going to want to apply for this.”
Amelia Wallace of Jensen Strategies said she understood it was a “tall order” but that it is also a big job.
“We have not found that this style of a recruitment brochure has discouraged candidates,” Wallace said. “We do communicate that this is the best fit. So, we are looking for the person that has as many of these as possible, understanding that’s not necessarily going to be one individual.”
During the opening of the meeting, Jensen staff had prefaced the job qualifications by saying they were flexible and considerate of candidates who may not have the exact qualifications but comparable skills.
Wallace thanked staff and council for their input and acknowledged the importance of emphasizing the manager would act as a facilitator, which she said was top of mind among people surveyed in determining the requirements and attributes residents deemed important in a manager.
In preparing the listing Jensen surveyed city council and staff as well as the public. An online survey, which was available to staff and the public, received no staff input but did receive 22 responses from community members. Forty people in total responded to the survey.
Council changed a few words in the draft, shuffled the order of priorities and streamlined some redundancies before leaving it to Jensen to write a final draft for final review before posting the job.
Jensen’s schedule is to have the council approve the brochure at its meeting next week and begin recruiting immediately with initial screening of applications the week of Aug, 28. The council will conduct online interviews the first two weeks of September with a selection of finalists on Sept 19. After reference and background checks on finalists, community meetings and in-person council interviews would be the week of Oct. 9 with possible selection Oct. 12.
The draft recruitment document is available at on the city’s website here.
- Garret Jaros is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com
Rick Sant gets it. God bless him.
Good lord, all of these people are too “smart” for their own — and the city’s — good.
Ahoy Yachats – News article has got it right.
Also it occurs to me the “command and control position” specification, along with the high bar of requirements and attributes, might attract predominantly egomanic bullies with inflated senses of their own skills.
Not that Yachats would ever hire someone like that.
I believe Rick got it exactly right!
“What I think you need is a facilitator that understands cross-functional workflow and how to create dynamic self-directed work teams,”
Rick Sant has already demonstrated himself to be an excellent city manager. He listens, spontaneously reaches out to people, works hard and interacts very well with the Yachats commissions and committees. He also has a sense of humor. Barring divine intervention, I don’t think we could find a better city manager than the one we have right now.