Call this meeting committee to hold to order.

And we have an action-packed agenda today.

Two resolutions.

First is a resolution to approve uh Commissioner Sasi's travel to the local national uh the local government Hispanic Network 2026 conference.

Uh motion.

So move support.

Any discussion.

Seeing none, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed.

Motion carries.

I don't I can vote for okay.

Um think you're getting any money out of this, you're just getting to go somewhere.

Um so uh second up is a resolution to schedule uh meetings for first ward city commission vacancy interviews and Mr.

Clerk, if you want to speak to this.

Uh before you do that, we're gonna move support.

Thank you.

Yes, so without a robust um conversation a while back about this first award city commissioner vacancy.

We came up with a um a timeline, and then the next step was to figure out what are the next um special meetings to do that.

So one is gonna be on uh for the committee of appointments on April 17 on that Friday for the committee on appointments to do first round interviews, and then the second one is on Wednesday the 2nd at 10 10 a.m.

or following the Brownfield um meeting, and then that will be to um interview any finalists that the committee on appointments moves forward.

Thank you.

Um we all got information on that, but I want to make sure that the public heard it.

So um feel free, folks, to reach out to us and anyone who's interested in applying.

I believe the application process is still open.

Yeah, this is it's another week.

Um applications are due on the 24th at five o'clock.

Okay, thank you.

So we've had people before who applied after the deadline, and that doesn't work, turns out.

Um so uh any other discussion on that item.

No.

Seeing none, all in favor say aye.

Aye, all opposed.

Motion carries.

That brings us to our briefing, our sole briefing, and our uh interim city attorney is gonna step down because this is a discussion of uh hiring a uh new city attorney.

Good morning, Mayor and Commissioners.

For the recruitment of our next city attorney, the city engaged Greg Nelson and his firm Mosaic Public Partners, which specializes in executive recruitment for public sector and local government leadership positions.

Greg and his team have been working with the city to conduct a national search and evaluate highly qualified candidates for this very important role.

This morning, Greg will provide an overview of the search process and introduce us to the backgrounds of the recommended candidates for consideration.

At this time, I'd like to welcome Greg Nelson.

Greg, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, Abel, and uh good to meet you all again.

It just seems like it wasn't that long ago when I was here meeting for the first time, but that was back in November.

And we are midway through the search uh where this is the opportunity for us to see who the candidates are in consideration and then discuss through next steps.

So just to recap, um that was back in November when we kicked off the search uh with a series of meetings with each of you with uh the law community with the stakeholders in the broader community, and also uh employees in the law department were offered an opportunity to submit information via survey, and there's a so community survey as well, and all of that input helped shape the candidate profile that we were used to market the position.

The position was open on January 12th and closed on February 23rd.

Um I'll just kind of re go back through the timeline that we discussed before.

Uh we'll we'll review the candidate pool, discuss recommended candidates and next steps.

And so those those are the three broad elements of the search process, the candidate profile development we just talked about.

We just completed outreach and recruiting, and we're moving into the selection process.

And this is the timeline that was presented to the commission in November, and we're on track with the timeline that was presented previously.

Uh in total, there were nine candidates that submitted interest in the position.

One withdrew just days ago, leaving us with eight, and we have three candidates that were recommending to advance.

These three candidates were those that were most aligned with the candidate profile.

All three are attorneys in Michigan with significant municipal experience, which was highlighted as an important attribute for in the candidate profile.

Two of those candidates are internal candidates.

One is an external candidate.

And I just mentioned local government Hispanic Network was one of the sites that we had advertised with amongst several others.

I just noticed that on the screen earlier.

Matthew's a partner at Cummings McClory Davison Acho.

It's a firm that has several offices in Michigan, also in New York and California, but they do also have an office in Grand Rapids, and he's based in Traverse City.

And working for municipal firms, attorneys are exposed to many clients rather than having a single client.

They have several clients and of different types, cities, counties, special districts, and so on.

And that can offer a lot of broad experience.

His experience is primarily both in litigation and general representation, and he's had supervisory experience, which was also highlighted as a desired attribute.

He went to he got his JD at Wayne State University in Detroit and has an undergrad from Ferris State University.

And that is Matthew Cross.

And Sarah Hartman is the director of legal affairs in the litigation division in the law department.

She has 19 years of experience with eight years of local government experience, so some private sector experience prior to her work in local government.

And that experience includes both working with the city Grand Rapids and firms that serve public agencies.

She received her JD from Thomas Cooley Law School here in Grand Rapids.

And the third candidate that we're recommending is Philip Strom, and Phil is the deputy city attorney currently serving as the interim city attorney.

He has 17 years of experience, 15 in local government, both for cities and counties in Michigan, and his experience includes both general representation, prosecution, and a brief stint as a county administrator.

Included in that is eight years of supervisory and management experience.

Phil also received his JD at Thomas Cooley Law School.

That public forum is going to occur on the evening of March 30th, open to anyone in the community, and based on the survey results, the questions will be tailored to address those topics that were deemed most important to the community.

Prior to that, candidates are going to have a pretty rigorous set of interviews with four different interviews throughout the day on March 30th.

That includes the city's executive team, the Grand Rapids Law Community, identified community stakeholders, and employees in the law department.

And the results of those interviews will be collected and feedback will be provided to the city commission along with to help inform the commission as well as the public forum feedback.

Those interviews with the city commission will be on Tuesday, March 31st.

And at that point, um Commission has the opportunity to discuss and deliberate and decide which path you want to move forward with.

And that all sets us up to meet our goal of having an appointment in April as on the original timeline.

And I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Great colleagues.

You mentioned a public survey.

I see the public forum on your timeline.

Is that a public survey that's available to the entire community on the online?

What's the vision there?

Sure.

So the the survey will be an opportunity to ask questions of the candidates and have them respond to the community at large, whoever's in attendance or is able to watch.

But in order to inform what questions are asked, what topics are raised, we are opening a survey today to understand which topics are most important to the community.

Okay, so for clarity, the public survey is to get topics and questions that would then be asked of the candidates live on March 30th at the forum.

And I just heard you say something, it might be televised or I mean on YouTube or what we normally do with our communication.

I'd have to link to the city staff on that completely.

Or is that like you have to be in person?

No, it it will be uh it's here.

Yeah, so it'll be um live stream.

Okay.

And you are correct, Commissioner, on how the survey informs the event.

Could you speak a little bit to your efforts to make sure we got a diverse pool here?

Um, because I we see we all see the three finalists, but if you go through that process a little more, yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Um it's always a goal, it's always a goal of ours and to try to have a diverse candidate pool.

And it starts at the beginning in where we advertise and where we outreach and making sure that we're advertising sources that are designed to improve the diversity of the pool.

Um we did um and then also making sure that our outreach is to candidates that are diverse and encouraging them to apply.

And um I will tell you that we had two very highly qualified candidates uh that were diverse and interested, uh, one nearly submitted and one submitted and withdrew just days ago.

Um, so it's that element was not um without effort for sure.

Thank you.

Um any other questions, colleagues?

Uh Commissioner Susie.

Thank you for the um overview.

Uh it feels like we were just kind of starting this process and saying, Oh, it's it's not gonna be fast enough, but here we are, and we've got all these things planned, so thank you for the work.

Um, thank you for asking that question, Mayor.

I know um that was an important question as we prepped um for all of this a few months ago.

And you know, we kind of talked about what is the realistic uh reasonable recruiting area, obviously, you know, somebody with that specific municipality experience, and for me, you know, Grand Rapids is the best city in the state of Michigan, um, but we're also uniquely positioned.

You know, we were at a conference last week, and you know, Detroit wasn't necessarily in the room because they're so much bigger, but we are also standing a lot bigger than other cities in this community too.

So I think that's also important.

Um, and glad that you know that's highlighted a bit.

You know, what are these um I think DC Baker, you and I were just saying it's like you know, it's uh the biggest uh middle-sized city, and so we just have a lot of unique and complex things that you know stand out to me, Grand Rapids, even compared to you know, just cities that are around us.

So I wanted to highlight that.

Um I also want to say um, you know, I've heard from some people who they've been reached out and they you know feel happy that they're gonna be included, you know, in this community engagement work, um, sharing their thoughts because you know, sometimes we only see maybe when uh Ms.

Hitchcock was up here and the things that happened, but there's so many things that happened behind the scenes.

Um, it could be litigation, but it could be also working with other entities, a lot of internal work as well.

So I just wanted to say thank you for that.

Thanks for those questions.

Um then I think my last question was did you hear anything from candidates sort of in that pre application submission process about things that they were surprised about in terms of Grand Rapids.

Maybe they didn't know something about us or things that they had caution about applying, or um just anything that would help us to refine how are we, you know.

Um but what had what else might have been shared or said about um maybe not so much the position, but about the city of Grand Rapids and things for us to be aware of or things to know as we move forward and I'm sure many other processes, um, things to be mindful of.

Yeah, thank you for that, Commissioner, for the comments and the question.

I think that um to answer the first part of your question.

Um in really all conversations, Grand Rapids was seen as a positive move.

I I didn't hear any concerns about Grand Rapids about you know any reason why people would not want to be interested in the role.

Um the challenge side, you know, the the most obvious challenge is just the nature of public processes like these in the state of Michigan, and that people have to be on the screen uh to be considered.

They have to be discussed, they have to be in the media, and that creates a substantial element of risk for people and their current employers.

Um it's you know, it's a trade-off for transparency in government.

Um it's something that we just have and uh we've recognized we have to operate in that environment.

In some other states, that's not like that, and we see a higher levels of participation because people are able to compete confidentially.

Um that's just not the case, and we can't change that.

So that is what it is.

Um we also have you know a dynamic of having a candidate that is in the interim role, and that can present uh a challenge for some people, just worrying about you know their potential success in the effort.

Thank you for sharing that, and that's a good point to say thank you.

I obviously we have our internal attorneys here.

Thank you both for putting yourselves in this public process.

Um it's not always easy and um for the third candidate, you know, just to make those decisions.

So that's a really good point that I'm glad you highlighted.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Um city manager.

Yep.

Thank you.

Uh thank you, Mayor and Commissioners.

I want to express my appreciation to our HR staff, uh, Mr.

Barbary and Michelle for their work and working with Mosaic and helping us through this process.

It uh it has been a minute uh since uh Ms.

Hitchcock retired in September of last year to be at this point.

So it certainly would could not happen without them, and there's a lot of work that's involved in the next step with the facilitation of uh all of those meetings.

So I want to thank you both in advance.

Um Commissioner Belchak again.

Uh I'm sorry.

I've as I've been sitting here thinking and listening to um my colleagues.

I just was um you mentioned there were nine folks, and these were the ones that you are presenting to us today.

Um what could you just describe your process and how what what what brought these folks or made your criteria for weeding that out?

I know it was based on our profile, but I'll leave it there.

Yeah, and and it is really alignment with the the candidate profile.

We look at candidates in four dimensions.

Um obviously education and experience are what we all think about.

Uh we also look at risk.

Um there's a number of risk factors or you know, maybe uh maybe some candidates have moved around a lot and um have not been reliable or had long tenures.

Uh maybe the um there may be media that with some candidates there is troublesome or concerning.

There's a lot of risk factors that can be attached, and then there also are some subjective qualities too that you know we all know are important in leadership roles, um leadership style presence, and so on.

Um in this particular case, it was really alignment with education experience were the primary factors.

Thanks.

I neglected to remind the commission in addition to your interviews on the 31st, I believe there was an agreement to have a date on April 1st as a backup in the case more deliberation or discussion was needed.

So that should be on your calendar.

Right.

And any event that more is needed after that, uh, April the 14th is the next regular city commission meeting.

Right.

So uh and just to highlight for the community there um the thing to pay attention to is the March 30th uh public forum discussion.

And my understanding there is that questions will be curated and not asked directly from the audience, but uh so don't expect to come up to the microphone.

Um, but you know, you can there is a process for getting uh community questions involved in the process.

So thanks.

Thanks for the work, and we will look forward to the next steps.

Thank you, Mayor.

And just in closing, I did want to say two things.

One um I wanted to just really highlight for everyone how much of a heavily engaged process this is for the role of city attorney compared to other cities.

Uh we do this work across the country.

Oftentimes the role of city attorney is a position that's in the background, and most people in the community don't even know who the city attorney is.

Um it's not a typically a prominent position, it's not one that typically has a lot of engagement.

And so really kudos to the city of Grand Rapids and the Commission and the staff just for making this an engaged process.

Um and I also wanted to just echo my compliments to Oval and Michelle.

They've been great partners in this and have been super helpful.

Thanks.

Good good to know.

And uh I I often say that, you know, my favorite form of democracy would be direct democracy.

Um we have to do a representative democracy uh because of complexity, but the more we can get the community involved in in meaningful discussions about things that cities are doing, the I think the happier everyone in the diocese is going to be.

So thanks for the help.

Thank you.

And I think that exhausts our agenda.

So I'm going to adjourn our meeting.