Based on the Mayor’s comments about the selection of our current Assistant City Manager as the next City Manager (CM), it sounds as if only the Assistant City Manager had the training and experience to address quality of life issues for our residents, advance the City’s economic recovery, make fiscally-sound budget decisions, and have the creative ideas to protect the unique character of our community.
Given the Mayor’s earlier comments on the radio about the strong candidates found by the recruitment firm, one must ask what specific traits on other candidates’ resumes or interviews would have gotten the CC to pick an outside candidate? Laguna does have what will now be an 11-plus-year history of promoting from within. Since the most requested CM trait from the three listening surveys was transparency, will the Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem pledge that only the current Assistant City Manager possessed the job experiences, college training, and interpersonal/management successes among all the applicants that the recruiter found for Laguna?
Deborah Laughton, Laguna Beach
Indy, for the sake of transparency please disclose this is Deborah Weiss, wife of Council member George Weiss. It’s only fair as the spouse of the other Council members would be held to a different standard were they to do the same thing.
The question posed, “what specific traits on other candidates’ resumes or interviews would have gotten the CC to pick an outside candidate?” should be answered by ALL City Council members. One would assume that a 5-0 vote means they ALL agreed that Ms. Dupuis was the most qualified for the position among numerous experienced applicants. If they didn’t believe this 100% and voted to hire her anyway and thus pass up our opportunity to put a top-notch experienced city manager in place, shame on them.
Sadly, it’s becoming clear to me that none of our Council members feel they need to listen to residents or step up to act honestly and responsibly on our behalf. Public official backroom deals seem to have become the norm. And we wonder why LB is sinking under growing community discourse.