Yachats council wants to interview candidate for interim city manager, hopes to hire Portland firm to find permanent one

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews

YACHATS – The Yachats city council took more steps Thursday to deal with the impending departure of city manager Heide Lambert, agreeing to interview a candidate for the interim position and then voting 3-2 to negotiate with a professional search firm to help it find a permanent manager.

The Yachats city council hopes to schedule an interview next week with Eileen Stein, who has been the city manager in West Linn, Sisters and Mt. Angel to serve as its interim manager. She comes from a list of possible interim candidates supplied by the League of Oregon Cities.

Mayor Craig Berdie and councilor Catherine Whitten-Carey interviewed Stein on April 28 and came away impressed enough to ask the full council to talk to her sometime next week, if possible.

“Personally, I found her very easy to talk to,” said Berdie, liking Stein’s answers on how she would get up to speed on issues and deal with a town “full of retired professionals who are eager to serve.”

“She had done her homework,” Berdie said, referring to three years of city hall chaos involving two city managers and two interim managers and a revolving door of temporary staff.

Stein was the West Linn city manager from 2016 to 2020, when she left after a long-running police department scandal. She was city manager in Mt. Angel from 2013 to 2016 and in Sisters from 2002 to 2013. She has also worked in city governments in Springfield, Rio Rancho, N.M. and Pasadena, Calif. She has taught graduate-level courses in public budgeting, finance and public works at Portland State University and has served on the League of Oregon Cities board and been president of the Oregon City/County Management Association.

Whitten-Carey said Stein is interviewing for two other interim manager jobs but is also interested exploring the full-time position in Yachats.

Councilor Ann Stott, who helped lead the last round of interim and permanent hirings, reminded the council that “we can’t be quite as picky” for the interim job.

“Unless there are major red flags, we need to move quickly,” she said.

Berdie said he is already putting the word out in the community seeking temporary housing for anyone the council chooses to replace Lambert after she leaves May 31. Lambert did not attend Thursday’s meeting.

Disagreement on headhunter

The council was split, however, on a decision which company to negotiate with to help it find a permanent manager.

But just a decision to seek outside help is a change from the long, chaotic search that led to Lambert’s hiring in February 2022 when the previous mayor and council did their own search to save money and have more control over candidate criteria and the process.

The council voted 3-2 Thursday to talk to a Jensen Strategies, a municipal government recruitment firm based in Portland. Stott and councilor Greg Scott voted no, saying they preferred a lower-cost service provided by a Lane Council of Governments subsidiary.

Scott said the proposals by Erickson and Prothman, a Northwest search firm based in Issaquah, Wash., involved “too much navel-gazing” and that “all the good people will be gone before they get to us.”

He also defended Lambert’s performance, saying a “lot of stuff got done that hadn’t in the past.”

“ …we created a situation that was going to have a no-win outcome,” Scott said. “This job is going to be challenging. We’ve demonstrated that.”

Councilor Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessey said she was “most impressed” with Jensen’s proposal.

“Let’s be honest, we haven’t been all that successful,” she said, adding that while the Jensen proposal was more expensive it seemed to offer a more thorough process than the two others.

“We can’t get it wrong this time,” said Whitten-Carey.

Councilors did agree to have Berdie ask Jensen if it would speed up its proposed 18-week process and ask to lower its fee of $26,500 and estimated expenses of $6,000.