November 10, 2005

EDITORIAL

Hawkey deserves interview in Village manager search

Village Council made a misstep when it agreed with a recommendation from the Village Manager Search Committee and left off the name of interim Village Manager Phil Hawkey from the list of candidates who will receive interviews for the Village’s top administrator.

Mr. Hawkey has shown during his two stints serving as the temporary head of the Village that he could be a capable manager. As the only internal candidate, he at least deserves a chance to interview with Council for the job.

During its meeting Monday, Council agreed to invite three applicants to Yellow Springs for interviews and a public event at which they could interact with the community. The three candidates — Teddy C. Ryan Jr., the borough manager of Columbia, Penn.; James C. Smith, the city manager of Newport, R.I.; and Eric C. Swansen of Jackson Hole, Wyo., a former city manager of Farmersville, Calif. — received the highest ratings from the Manager Search Committee as part of its evaluation method. The chairman of the committee, Al Schlueter, said the three candidates were ranked “considerably higher” than the other 10 applicants who had made it this far in the search process. In addition, the committee presented Council with resumes and material from two other candidates, giving Council a total of five candidates to consider for interviews. (The resolution Council approved that created the search committee said the task force had to recommend to Council “its five best choices” for “follow-up contact and informal interviews.”)

Unfortunately, Mr. Hawkey did not score among the top five applicants. But given his work with the Village and the fact that he is a Yellow Springs resident, it’s hard to understand why Mr. Hawkey is not one of five best choices for the manager’s job.

He may not be the most experienced candidate, and the other five applicants may be more qualified, but Mr. Hawkey deserves additional consideration. After all, he knows this community, which he’s been a part of since 2000 — and that’s something none of the top five candidates can say. He also understands the Village government, for which he’s worked since 2003, first as the zoning administrator, then as the Village planner. Perhaps most important, he’s filled in as manager twice this year, in the spring for three months, when former Villager Manager Rob Hillard went on medical leave, and since September, after Mr. Hillard resigned.

Mr. Hawkey reacted graciously to the search committee’s recommendation, saying in a letter to Village staff members and Council that he respected “the process established by the selection committee,” and accepted the decision “without reservation or hard feelings of any sort.”

The search committee, which includes nine people, has worked diligently and thoroughly, and its charge has not been easy. The committee members had to sift through 120 applications to find a reasonable number of candidates who deserved further scrutiny. Some may view the committee’s system of ranking the candidates, which was based on their qualifications and personal attributes, as an objective and fair way to judge the applicants without emotional attachment to any one applicant.

Nevertheless, the system also overlooked what could be the largest challenge for a new Village manager: the idiosyncrasies of the Yellow Springs community. This is the one area in which Mr. Hawkey clearly ranks higher than the other applicants.

There’s an easy solution to this oversight: when the new Council is installed on Nov. 21, it should add Phil Hawkey’s name to the list of applicants receiving interviews. He may not get the job, but Mr. Hawkey’s loyalty and hard work over the last two years have earned him this courtesy.

— Robert Mihalek