Okay, we will call this uh special meeting to order.

And this is our final candidate interviews and selection of the city manager.

Um Madam Clerk, if you can go ahead and do a roll call for me, please.

Mr.

Angle Key.

Mrs.

Frank here.

Mr.

Howard is um excused temporarily.

Mr.

Smith.

Here, Mr.

Weed.

Here, Vice Mayor Boltz.

Here, Mayor Pechota.

Here.

We'll stand for the Pledge Allegiance, and I will go ahead and lead that.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States.

And to the republic for which it stands, one nation under the indivisible liberty and justice for all.

Okay, so I'm gonna just go through some uh housekeeping real quick and then we'll get started with the process and I'll I'll review that with everyone so we understand what the day is gonna look like.

First and foremost, I want to thank all of the candidates.

We really appreciate you guys looking at our city, giving us uh a view for the past few days and all of the work that went into you guys making the application.

So thank you guys very much.

Um we appreciate you.

I want to thank the citizens.

Last night we had a community meet and greet.

I think there was roughly 70 people or so in attendance throughout the evening, and um I heard a lot from the community, and I was just very grateful to see so many of our our constituents and of my colleagues to show up and participate in that.

And again, thank you of the candidates for um being there and being open and willing to discuss yourselves with our citizenry.

Thank you to the council um for giving me the freedom and ability to do this process.

It's been a very hard, difficult process, um, one that I would have been absolutely fine never having had done.

Um, but uh we are here and we are doing it, and um I just appreciate my colleagues for having the faith and trust in me to to do this.

But I also more importantly recognize that as council members, when you sign up to do this job and you finally get elected, you know, you you commit to so much time, you know, and we have jobs and we have other things outside of this.

So to take a budget budget um workshop week and then go right into doing sit or meet city manager interviews for three days is giving a lot of yourselves, and I really appreciate all of you for taking this seriously for giving of yourself, uh, for your families giving you know us the time uh to have you here to do this.

So thank you very much, and I appreciate you.

With that said, the format for today is we're gonna do um final interviews.

This is a public meeting, so the public is um obviously permitted to uh attend and participate in the form of audience participation at the completion of all the interviews.

Um it'll follow our our traditional audience participation format.

Uh city residents will have five minutes to come up and speak.

Uh we'll listen to all of the comments of the citizens before I I move into deliberation and come to the council with a um nomination of a candidate.

The process of interviewing, each candidate will get 30 minutes.

Uh there will be a green light up at the presenter's table.

That's where the candidates will sit.

That will indicate the start of time, and then each candidate will be asked to give three to five minutes of an introduction.

You can take as much of that time as you need.

At five minutes, I'll be watching the clock, and I'll kind of give you an indication that it's it's time to move into questions.

When there's five minutes left in the 30 minutes, the light will turn yellow, and that will indicate to you that we have five minutes left.

Once I finish the questions with the council, I'll ask you to close in about a one to two minute statement.

If you feel that there's anything that we need to know or the public needs to know, that'll be your opportunity to get your last few words in there about yourself and the process and all of that kind of stuff.

And again, I'll be I'll be doing my best to keep time to make sure that we stay on task.

Each council member will have the opportunity to ask one or two questions if if they have questions.

Um, and as time permits, I may have to shorten that down to one question per council member depending on the responses we're getting from the candidates.

I would ask that the candidates just keep in mind that with seven of us doing these questions and doing two questions each, that may only give you a two-minute response to each question.

So just kind of keep not necessarily saying to keep your your answers concise, but at the same time, just be cognizant of the time clock.

30 minutes will go by pretty quick.

If we get to the end, and and not a lot of council members had questions, you know, just so the public is aware, we did have interviews with all of these candidates for about 50 minutes each.

Each council member met with the candidates.

So we probably have a pretty good idea, but this is an opportunity for us to share with our colleagues things that we might feel were important that we learned in our interview.

So I put that out there just so everyone understands if a council member doesn't ask a question, it may be because they have the information they need and they feel that all of that has already been put out there and there's there's no more information needed for this.

You will be allotted the 30 minutes, but if we get to the end and you feel that you've answered all the questions, you have nothing else to say, you don't need to take that 30 minutes.

If you get to 25 minutes and and you've said you're closing and you're done, don't feel like you have to sit there for 25 or for five more minutes.