On February 27, 2026, the Tacoma City Council held a special public meeting to present two finalists for the city manager position and to gather community feedback. The event included presentations from each candidate, questions from the council, and a meet-and-greet session. Community input will inform the council's decision, which is expected at a council meeting on March 3, 2026.
There we go. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Mayor Anders Ibsen. On behalf of the city council, thank you so much for being here today for your interest in the City of Tacoma's city manager recruitment process. This evening's program is one of several public opportunities the city has provided for community participation in the process. Planning for the recruitment began in June 2025 through our operational strategy and administrative committee, which have been open to the public to allow community members to observe the process and provide input. In October 2025, the city conducted a stakeholder survey to gather feedback from city staff and the community. Participants were asked to submit one question they would want to ask city manager candidates, identify the top three knowledge skills and abilities needed for the role, and rank the key competencies previously identified by the city council. A total of 318 responses were received. On January 27th, human resources provided an update on the recruitment process during a city council meeting, which included an opportunity for public comment. Throughout the process, community input has been used to inform the selection process, interview questions, and candidate screening. Earlier today, community members selected by city council participated in interview panels. And this evening you'll have an opportunity to provide feedback on the finalists. All of this input is critical in helping City Council make its decision on the city's next city manager. We truly appreciate you taking the time to engage with us. Community input is an important part of this process, and your participation helps ensure that we select a city manager who understands and reflects the values, priorities, and needs of Tacoma. At this point, I'd like to turn this program over to Cliff Moore from Profman, who has been working closely with the city council throughout this recruitment. Cliff will briefly walk through this process leading up to today and explain what you can expect this afternoon. Cliff Thank you, Mayor and Council, and good afternoon to all of you. I'll add my thanks to each of you coming out today to uh participate in this important uh decision for the city of Tacoma and also welcome all of those that are watching on the live stream right now. As the mayor said, my name is Cliff Moore. I'm the consultant with Prothman, the executive recruiting firm that's been working with the city on this important process. Uh I started this process months ago with the human resource team with mayor and council and have uh done uh stakeholder interviews with all of the council members to get their input on the kind of personal characteristics and professional and academic preparation that is essential for your next city manager. We did a national outreach for this position. Uh we had 72 applications from uh we had 72 applications from 16 different states and the District of Columbia. Forty of the applications were from the state of Washington, and the other 32 were outside of the state of Washington. I'm a former city manager myself, a former county manager and longtime county department director, so I have some understanding of sort of the nature of this work. So I screened all of those 72 applications, and based on that uh feedback from council and the position profile that was created to advertise the position and the formal job description. I identified 19 individuals who looked like they met or exceeded the minimum qualifications, and also who had the kind of the personal characteristics based on their their written materials that looked like they would be a good fit for Tacoma. I invited those 19 individuals to uh preliminary Zoom interview with me. Two of those individuals did withdraw at that point, and I did conduct the 17 interviews for um uh the 17 preliminary interviews. I wrote up detailed notes from all of those interviews and packaged up that material with the applicant's uh resumes, cover letters, and response to supplementary questions. Provided the a letter of recommendation uh and ranking for council. They met in executive session and decided that there were five individuals that they wanted to move to the next stage, which was a Zoom interview with all of all of council and the mayor. Subsequently, another individual withdrew at that point, and council did then have uh Zoom interviews with four applicants. And they met again in executive session after those uh interviews and decided to invite us finalists the two individuals that you'll see tonight. After after um uh in a few moments, you will get to hear from each of those finalists. That each of them will do a presentation, and there will be some questions that the council will ask of of those uh candidates. Um following the presentations and the questions, there will be kind of an open uh mingling time over here where you see the tables. There'll be an opportunity for you all to visit with candidates, and there will be a comment card on the tables for for each candidate. So you'll be free to write some uh comments for counsel to help inform their decision, talk about the the strengths of each candidate, maybe the concerns that you see, and I'll collect those forms at the end of the session this afternoon and provide those to council, and they will be uh used to help inform their decision. They've scheduled again an executive session for the third of March to deliberate and um and then they may take action later that night at a council meeting on March 3rd. So mayor and council, thank you again for the opportunity to work with you and I appreciate the opportunity, and um we look forward to the presentations this evening. I don't see the screen. Your first present representative. Yes, sir. Yes. Right there. Presentations and questions. Yeah.