Good evening. I'm going to open the City Council special meeting of Monday, August 12th, calling the meeting to order and we will be going into a closed executive session to discuss qualifications of an applicant for public employment pursuant to RCW 42.30.110 per 1 per G. This will be a closed session expected to last approximately 15 minutes. We're going into executive session at 6.01.
So we are out of executive session at 6.26 and the action item this evening for open session is AB 7825 confirmation of the city administrator. The council will be asked tonight to confirm the mayor's appointment of Wally Bobkiewicz as the city administrator and to authorize the mayor to enter into and execute the employment contract. So this agenda bill is asking council this evening to confirm the appointment and to direct the mayor to execute the contract. We have been going through a recruitment process since March of 2019 when our current city administrator Emily Moon announced that she would be departing this August. We hired a recruiting firm, Kerras Consulting, to spearhead our city administrator recruitment process. The job description has been provided in the agenda bill and in advance of doing our recruitment, we worked with Kerras to do some stakeholder interviews and work with our city senior leadership team as a whole and with individuals and members of the city council to gather input on the qualifications of the ideal candidates that the city is seeking. So the public public engagement survey was also conducted. The job announcement for the position was posted on Kerras's website on May 3rd and there were over 80 applicants who responded to it. Several first-round interviews were conducted online via Skype and in-person interviews were conducted with city staff, city council, and community stakeholders with six finalists from the panel. On July 25th, two finalists, Wally Bobkiewicz and Marty Wine, were invited to the city to attend staff and public forums. The input received included 25 participants at our community open house, 16 leaving comments, written notes and summaries and also calling to discuss the finalists, 30 of our city staff attended two staff sessions that we had and left 29 written comments and several had follow-up calls and conversations, and the city council had the opportunity to meet with the applicants one-on-one. Through this process, Wally Bobkiewicz emerged as the front runner and he has demonstrated through our work here a wealth of relevant experience, excitement for the opportunity to serve Issaquah as well as having received a substantial amount of favorable comments from a variety of stakeholders. So following the finalist forums, I went and visited Evanston and did a site visit meeting with staff, community stakeholders and elected aldermen, observing Mr. Bobkiewicz's performance. Mr. Bobkiewicz has served in senior management roles in city government for over 20 years, most recently as city manager of Evanston, Illinois. He has a master's degree in public administration and is an active member of the International City County Management Association. We also included Mr. Bobkiewicz's resume as attachment B. Based on the due diligence and the work that I've been doing with the council and the community over the last few months, I'm recommending this evening that the council confirm the appointment of Mr. Bobkiewicz to the position of city administrator and is there anyone to make a motion? Council President Marts.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. I move to confirm the mayor's appointment of Wally Bobkiewicz as the city administrator and authorize the mayor to enter into and execute the employment contract.
Is there a second? Second. It's been moved and seconded to approve the appointment. Is there conversation or discussion for council? Or questions? Or comments? Councilmember Goodman. Thank you. I just want to applaud the mayor's office and the mayor and all of those involved for a really great process. It was a really in-depth process involving the community, involving the employees, and the site visit and and the consultant, but it just really was an in-depth process and I applaud that. Thank you. Thank you. And before we take additional comments, I did want to note that Councilmember Winterstein has an excused absence this evening. Any other comments or questions? Okay, I'll reread the motion. Council is being asked to confirm the mayor's appointment of Wally Bobkiewicz as the city administrator and to authorize the mayor to enter into and execute the employment contract. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All those opposed? That carries unanimously. Thank you, council. This closes out the city council special meeting of Monday, August 12th. We will be adjourning at 6.31 and council will be moving into a work session this evening. Thank you.