bought a fruitless search result
for City Administrator.
MASON CITY — You get what you pay for, so the saying goes, and the Mason City council and mayor flubbed another project, wasting thousands of dollars on a fruitless search for a new city administrator.
After Brent Trout left Mason City for greener pastures in Kansas, the city council here hired Mark A. Jackson Consulting and Hinson Consulting, LLC, to conduct a City Administrator search. That project ended up costing $6,600.00. NIT is told a typical search of this kind costs much more, upwards of $50,000 or more, if conducted in a serious manner. Once the search got underway, the Globe Gazette declared, “Their recruitment and vetting process produced an impressive field of candidates with the City receiving 30 applications from candidates in 12 states.” That so-called “impressive field” was then whittled down to 5 candidates.
However, some in town were less-than-impressed with the finalists. One former elected official told NIT, “these guys want to move up from JV to varsity … they ain’t ready.”
who he wants as
City Administrator.
After a number of closed-session meetings on the matter and weeks later, the Mason City council finally threw in the towel and declared that the search was fruitless and none of the candidates brought forth by Jackson and Hinson fit the bill.
In a statement released Thursday, Mayor Bill Schickel said, “the Mason City City Council is not further pursuing any of the five finalists for City Administrator. We thank the finalists for their interest and believe they have outstanding qualifications, but are not a right fit for Mason City at this time.
“Fortunately we have an outstanding Interim City Administrator and staff so we are in a good position,” Schickel said. Kevin Jacobson is the city’s Interim City Administrator and remains Finance Director, as well.
“I have asked our Human Resources Department to recommend to the City Council additional options for City Administrator candidate recruitment,” Schickel claims.
in the search for the next
City Administrator?
However, the word in the NIT newsroom is that Schickel and the council pretty much know who they intend to pursue for the job and Robin Anderson of the Mason City Chamber of Commerce has played a role in the process. This candidate wants the job, but is not outwardly campaigning for it. He is qualified, appears to have done a good job in his role nearby to Mason City, and will likely pick up where Trout left off.
Ominously, NIT is told that if hired, this person might be pressured to eliminate certain city employees who “ask too many questions” and “don’t play ball” with the mayor, council and those who continue to doggedly pursue the beleaguered Renaissance Project.
“You could see dominos fall if this hiring goes through, which seems now to be inevitable,” NIT is told by an insider. “One job is taken, another opens elsewhere. The open job is then filled, perhaps, by someone with no experience as a City Administrator, but real good at ordering them around, maybe with a background of dividing a community and attacking folks, bullying. Then that town will need a watchdog, cameras at meetings, if you take my meaning.”
NIT will continue to follow developments in the continuing saga of city hall business in Mason City.
Mason City Council – unqualified morons acting like the good ‘ol boys elected by a majority stupid population running what’s left of this town into the ground. It’s the citizens of this town that will eventually get screwed cause they are dumb, lazy and stupid to stand up and do anything about it. They are scared ‘cause they might get singled out by the idiots they voted into office.
my daughter was smart, she moved away and now makes $58.00 a hr tell me just where could she make that kind of money in mason city?? mayor and council don’t want jobs like that in mason city,
even though kevin doesn’t have much personality give the job to him, its on next weeks council meeting to promote someone to be his assistant with a additional $20,000 a yr raise. COME ON CITY, PROMOTE FROM WITHIN look what happens when you go outside Jack Schlieper, worst chief the PD ever had, Fire Chief, fired for having a booze and drug party, current police chief, what ever his name is, already looking for a different job, last police chief, just looking for a laid back job to finish his carrer and retire. the current employees that put in for the job, give it to them if they been here 20-30 yrs that means they are going to stay and with that many yrs they must be doing something right or they would be gone. cant understand the city going outside to hire, current employees don’t have much to look forward to if there is no promotion to a higher level.
When will these white collar crime’s end against the hard working people and taxpayers of Mason City by your so-called “elected officials” and their cronie friends? The taxpayers’ hard earned dollars deserve to be and should be, used and spent to the benefit of the ALL of the citizens of Mason City …..not just the crooked leadership and criminal friends’ ” personal cash cow wish list”! Stop the criminal nightmare people! YOU DESERVE BETTER!
But…..there hasn’t been enough of the taxpayer’s money foolishly spent yet to come to a simple no cost solution by the top notch con artist’s and friends that are running this city! Keep on spending…… until we aquire the perfect group of white collar criminals to continue taking the taxpayers money while blowing smoke up the citizens a$$’s! Time to clean house and replace them all with someone that doesn’t have their own hidden personal agenda in mind! It can be a thriving city with the right people on board! The ones already in place are sinking the ship quickly! The other cronies have already jumped ship! Wake the f**k up citizen’s of Mason City! The outsiders can see it….why can’t you!
Unfortunately, Mason City has such a bad reputation around the Midwest now that we don’t get applications from the best candidates. Our best bet probably is to promote from within, since those people are already here and have put down roots, so they’ll probably stick around awhile. Kevin Jacobson seems like a pretty smart guy, and he’s been doing two full-time jobs for months now. We should promote him, and promote a member of his finance staff to finance director.