The Cottonwood City Council decided not to contract with Interim Public Management to hire a new interim city manager candidate and voted 4-2 on Jan. 21 to keep current interim City Manager Tom Whitmer, the city utilities director, in the position until the city can hire a new permanent manager.
Vice Mayor Debbie Wilden said that hiring IPM would cause unnecessary stress on staff and that the candidates would be referred to Whitmer if they had questions, which she argued made no sense, and that Whitmer was doing a good job.
“I’m not real comfortable with another person knowing about all of our lawsuits,” Wilden added. Fired police chief Steve Gesell is suing the city over his 2023 termination while former Cottonwood City Councilman Derek Palosaari is suing the city over an investigation that found he had allegedly sexually harassed at least six female staffers.
She also pointed out that if the city were to hire a new manager within the next three months, the contract stipulated that they would still have to pay IPM until May.
“I think this needs to happen,” Councilman Chris Dowell said. “We don’t know when we’re going to find that next city manager … I don’t want to be rushed. I don’t want staff to be rushed on getting that done.” Dowell also questioned the need to have a separate director of utilities if Whitmer has been able to work fulltime as both the director of utilities and the interim city manager for the past 13 months.
“If he’s able to perform such a great job as the city manager and as utilities director, to me there’s a problem there,” Dowell said. “There’s something that’s missing.”
“I also didn’t find any of the interim city manager candidates to be strong candidates and worthy of the disruption that would be incurred by changing interim city managers,” Councilwoman Felicia Coates said Mayor Ann Shaw said that she did not think hiring a new interim city manager would be disruptive and wanted to do so while looking to fill the permanent position.
“I continue to be in favor of hiring an interim city manager partly because of the fact that so many of us are new to council and I feel like we would benefit from the depth of experience of someone who has served in that capacity for a number of years and in other places as well,” Shaw said.
Councilwoman Joy Mosley was concerned that the council’s top candidate was not mentioned in the contract, that the contract would allow IPM to replace a consultant if they became unavailable and that she was not impressed with the selection of candidates the firm presented to them.
“I believe we should continue with Mr. Whitmer as the interim manager,” Councilman Bob Marks said.
Marks said that the city was in the middle of strategic planning and about to start the budgeting process, in which Whitmer’s institutional knowledge would be needed. He added that the city has had a lot of momentum and that the council had quickly gotten on top of issues facing the city. Whitmer said that the assistant utilities director handles the day-to-day operations of the job and his involvement
is only required for major decisions.
Shaw asked if there was interest in seeing a new slate of candidates from IPM; there was not. Coates, Marks, Mosley and Wilden voted against hiring IPM while Shaw and Dowell voted in favor. Councilman Stephen DeWillis recused himself.
Dowell requested that a presentation be put on a future agenda explaining why the city needs a utilities director if one person can do both jobs.
The council also unanimously approved the adoption of a City Council Code of Conduct.
