Authority

When the City Council on Tuesday interviewed four headhunters and selected one, Alliance Resource Consulting LLC, of Long Beach, to search for a city manager, it was unusual that the selection was done in public (the estimated cost, some $24,250 or less, is within the city manager’s spending authority), and Mayor Ann Johnston made something of that.

In a report to the council, she said that “based on the council’s goals of transparency and public input in filling a critical and visible position, the item is presented for council consideration and approval.”

It likely is just as important that the selection was the full council’s, positioning against complaints that might otherwise come up during a search. The search itself is not likely to be so public an affair.

Measure U, which was approved by voters in 2000, afforded the mayor the power to nominate a candidate for city manager for approval by the council, significant in that it would allow the mayor to force a vote on a candidate absent a pool from which her colleagues could choose. In City Hall’s first search since that measure passed, then-Mayor Gary Podesto in 2001 deferred, including council members throughout the selection process. Johnston said this afternoon that she will do the same.

“I’m not about to just choose whoever I want and say, ‘Here it is, council. Take it or leave it,’” she said. “This will be a collaborative approach … That’s the only way to do it fairly.”

Johnston doubted any future Stockton mayor would find occasion to employ Measure U in the search for a city manager, at least as long as the mayor lacks veto power.

“I don’t see it happening,” she said. “It would be counterproductive, frankly.”