Council wants outside agency to find SLT city manager

By Kathryn Reed

The majority of the South Lake Tahoe City Council wants an outside agency to recruit the next city manager. Councilman Bill Crawford was the lone voice against that idea at Tuesday’s meeting.

Dave Jinkens gave notice earlier this year that he will not seek an extension to his contract that expires in August. He came on board as city manager in 2002.

Dave Jinkens' departure has the council squabbling about how to replace him.

Before the final vote, Crawford proposed having Assistant City Manager Rick Angelocci be the interim city manager upon Jinkens departure. He and Councilman Jerry Birdwell were on the losing end of that vote.

It was estimated it will take four to six months before a city manager is hired.

Crawford’s logic was that it would be good to have an interim named now, take the time to find the right person and save the city money in the process.

Birdwell liked the idea of saving money as well.

“We are going to have to start cutting in a big way,” Birdwell said. “I think we need to let him work as assistant city manager and see how the economy goes.”

He said hotel tax numbers were down in February by half of what they were the prior year at his bed and breakfast.

Mayor Kathay Lovell said she’d prefer “crossing that bridge when get to it” if an interim city manager is needed.

The only member of the public to speak was Kenny Curtzwiler, who doesn’t live in the city. He is an advocate of creating a strong mayor government and doing away with the city manager form of rule.

The city will send out requests for proposals to find a headhunter to find a city manager. No discussion was had on how much the city would pay for a recruiter or what the next city manager’s pay range will be.

The idea of waiting until the next council is seated to hire the city manager was broached, but went nowhere. Lovell, Crawford and Birdwell’s terms expire at the end of the year.

In other action:

• Jinkens said officials from Target are still interested in talking about opening a store in South Lake Tahoe. The council said it’s fine if he keeps talking with them.

• Charter Communications, the cable television supplier to the city, is applying for a state agreement. The city would still see money from the deal, but the franchise agreement would not be directly with the city. The city will need to rewrite some of its regulations to accommodate the change when it goes into affect later this year.

• Council heard a lengthy discussion on the state of disrepair the city’s roads are in. Staff said it could cost $78 million over 25 years to fix them. The funding, though, isn’t there. The council asked for an executive summary and recommendations for how to proceed to be given to them at a future meeting.

• Revenues are off by 2.7 percent to date and growing.