By Brian Wright|Casa Grande Dispatch
Citing a need to speed up the process of finding an interim county manager, the Pinal County Board of Supervisors started its search Wednesday.
The board voted 4-0, with Vice Chairman Anthony Smith absent, to post the job to the county’s website immediately and to collect resumes and applications until the end of business hours on Monday.
The four supervisors in attendance at Wednesday’s special meeting disagreed on what type of candidate to bring in, but all of them were in agreement that the search had to begin immediately.
Chairman Steve Miller of Casa Grande said he wanted to hire someone from outside the county, and he said whoever is hired should not be eligible for the permanent county manager position, now occupied by Fritz Behring.
On May 22, the Scottsdale City Council hired Behring to be its next city manager in a 7-0 vote. Behring’s last day on the job at Pinal County is June 30.
“I think it’s less disruptive — I think it gives us an oppo tunity to put a (fresh) set of eyes in,” Miller said. “I think it’s always good to have somebody look at the operation from another viewpoint.”
However, fellow Republican Supervisors Cheryl Chase of San Tan Valley and Todd House of Apache Junction disagreed with Miller’s statements. They said they would be OK with utilizing someone who already works for the county, and both said whomever is named interim county manager should be able to apply for the permanent position.
While he admitted it wasn’t on the same scale as the search for a county manager, House, a board member of the Apache Junction Fire District, compared the
situation to the district’s hiring of a fire chief.
House said he had been against an interim becoming the permanent fire chief in the beginning, but he said that’s what happened and added the person has been a “wonderful” fire chief.
“I wouldn’t want to eliminate that possibility,” he said.
Miller said the reason he didn’t want an interim manager to apply for the permanent job was because he didn’t want the interim candidate to have a chance to “lobby” the supervisors to be named county manager. He said having a new person hired as the permanent county manager would allow for a “clean transition.”
Chase said she preferred to transfer someone already at the county, but she agreed with District 1 Supervisor Pete Rios of Dudleyville when he said he wanted someone with county manager experience, which none of the current county employees have. The closest is Assistant County Manager Himanshu Patel, who was previously the town manager of Florence. Patel, however, has been with the county less than six months.
Rios said he’d like to see a retired county manager from Arizona take over the interim role, and Miller said he had already been contacted by a couple of retired county managers who are interested in the position, although he didn’t give names. The city of Maricopa utilized a similar strategy back in 2007, drawing upon an Arizona City and County Management Association program to employ former Mesa City Manager Mike Hutchinson for a month-long stint.
Rios said he knows of retired county managers from Maricopa County and said Mohave and Coconino counties may also have former county managers who could fill the interim role. He said Presiding Superior Court Judge Robert Carter Olson also has expressed interest to the supervisors in taking the position.
Chase explained why she wanted someone from inside the county to be the interim manager.
“I’m concerned about going outside because right now, I think we need the stability of having somebody who’s already able to hit the ground running,” she said.
