Mayor Reynolds ready to suggest administrator

Published 3:29 pm Monday, January 4, 2010

Early next week, everyone should know who Enumclaw’s next city administrator will be.

Mayor Liz Reynolds said she will forward a recommendation to the seven-members of the City Council during Monday’s regularly-scheduled meeting. Under Enumclaw’s mayor-council form of government, Reynolds can suggest who is hired, but nothing is official without council approval.

The city administrator is charged with running the city on a day-to-day basis, carrying out directives of the mayor and council.

City Attorney Mike Reynolds – no relation to the new mayor – has been serving as interim city administrator since Mark Bauer announced his resignation in November. Bauer’s last day on the job was Dec. 14; the following day, he started work as city manager in nearby Edgewood.

Reynolds has not gone public with her choice for city administrator, but noted her candidate is an in-house selection, pulled from the ranks of current department heads.

Reynolds said she decided to hire from within, rather than hiring an outside agency to conduct a widespread search, for several reasons. Primary among those was money.

“We just went through a really tough budget process,” she said, adding that looking high and low for a candidate doesn’t guarantee a perfect fit.

Hiring from within, she said, gets someone on the job immediately, guarantees a candidate ready to hit the ground running and, further, shows current city employees there is room for advancement.