Handy Tips for Hiring the Kind of City Manager the People and the Politicians Want

With visions of last month’s retirement announcement by his nemesis/rival, City Manager Jerry Fulwood, still happily percolating in his head, Mr. Silbiger declared, unsurprisingly, that The People should at least participate in, if not dominate, the process of hiring a successor.

Are we electing eighth-grade class officers? Or choosing a professional grownup to lead the whole community?

And so Mr. Silbiger suggested that City Hall should advertise in the newspapers of Culver City, inquiring of The People, “What kind of City Manager do you want?”

Mayor Scott Malsin , who holds a more traditional view of political life, did not necessarily think that was as impractical as some of the Vice Mayor’s previous impulses. But the Mayor gently reminded his colleague, for perhaps the 10th time, that the Council was elected to represent the people, reflect, when appropriate, the will of the people.

Where Is the Line Drawn?

“It is essential that decision-makers understand what their constituents want to see,” Mr. Malsin told the newspaper this morning.

But there are limits. They were not elected to share power with the people, which has been Mr. Silbiger’s unwavering contention.

The Mayor cited a crucial distinction between the Vice Mayor’s kitchen-sink philosophy and his own narrower, but more traditional, view: “Representatives of the people were elected to learn the issues from a broad perspective,” he said, as distinguished from private persons who may retain a much less global view.

Mr. Silbiger, a hardline partisan liberal, never has been convinced that anyone on earth possesses the sui generis insight and wisdom of the amorphous collection known as The People.

Like most politicians, by The People, Mr. Silbiger means only those who share his point of view.

The tension between Mr. Silbiger and Mr. Malsin has become increasingly visceral since they were elected to the main, but somewhat ceremonial, political positions in City Hall by their teammates last April.

They are not pals, and neither are their competing world views.

Balancing the Role of The People

Still, what separates them is more clouded than crystallized.

Both agree the community needs to be heard from, notwithstanding the fact that in Culver City, when broader issues (non-neighborhood-specific topics) are raised, The Community amounts to a tiny, outspoken claque that largely rubber-stamps Mr. Silbiger’s inflexible agenda.

Mr. Silbiger may even be happier than Mr. Fulwood’s immensely patient wife, Dana, that Mr. Fulwood is withdrawing into a consultant-style retirement. As with the Mayor, Mr. Silbiger and Mr. Fulwood are the antithesis of chums.

Remarkably energized and renewed since three new teammates were elected to the City Council last spring, Mr. Silbiger has tracked his agenda, week by week, with more rigor and vigor than he ever was able to summon during his first six years on the dais.

With Mr. Fulwood having one foot on the other side of the door, Mr. Silbiger does not mean to waste one precious second replacing him with his particular kind of chief executive.

His model of a City Manager, however, still is in silhouette.

But he did post two curious ideas for his colleagues to chew on — the newspaper advertisement and an unmistakably prominent and ongoing role for The People every step of the hiring process.

The former scheme may work. The latter is more problematic.

Mr. Silbiger ran into a Malsin buzzsaw when he suggested, for example, that the City Manager finalists should submit to questioning from The People.

Whoa, said the Mayor. That won’t work because it would breach the confidentiality of their status. Identity of the finalists must be protected , he said, because their employers may not know they are job-hunting.