Five months after the slightly mysterious sudden departure from City Hall of Martin Cole, who doubled as assistant City Manager and City Clerk, he is in the process of being replaced.
Following a series of high-profile appearances around the City Council election in April, Mr. Cole instantly vanished. The first explanation was that he had incurred a sudden disability that interfered with performance of his duties. The second story was that he and his nearly $200,000 annual salary no longer were associated with City Hall.
Meantime, City Manager John Nachbar announced he was seeking an aide whose duties would differ substantively from Mr. Cole’s former role. Instead of an assistant City Manager, he would hire an “assistant to” the City Manager at a salary in the $124,000 range.
More than 80 potential assistants applied.
More than half of them were promptly eliminated.
“We invited 30 applicants to take the written exercise,” said Serena Wright-Black, Human Resources director, and 24 completed the assignment.
By mid-September, the field has been reduced to seven ladies and gentlemen. They are being interviewed today by an “outside panel,” City Hall reps from Inglewood and Santa Monica.
Before the end of the month, Mr. Nachbar is scheduled to separately interview the seven finalists and – perhaps – make a hiring decision.
Ms. Wright-Black explained how the process works. While the final call is Mr. Nachbar’s, “we work with John at the beginning of the recruitment to develop a recruitment plan that includes how we are going to publicize the position, how we are going to market it, and putting together the recruitment materials.
“We worked on the written exercise, the questions that we were going to ask, and how we were going to evaluate them,” Ms. Wright-Black said.
The next and final move will be Mr. Nachbar’s.
