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The Eugene City Council is expected to choose a recruiting firm next week to lead the search for a new city manager, after narrowing the list of firms to three.
Four city councilors selected three recruiting firms July 3 as finalists to lead the search for Eugene’s next city manager.
The councilors interviewed six firms in 30-minute time slots, ultimately advancing CPS HR Consulting, Bob Murray & Associates, and WBCP Inc. to a final round with the full council next week. The process is an early step in the council’s work to replace City Manager Sarah Medary, who will leave the role in December after six years.
Fifteen recruitment firms submitted letters of interest for the job last month, detailing their qualifications, pricing, approach and past searches.
Councilors Greg Evans, Jennifer Yeh, Lyndsie Leech and Alan Zelenka volunteered to review the proposals. They averaged individual ratings to select the top six firms for initial interviews on July 2.
During the interviews, the councilors asked representatives of the firms to describe their work, discuss their most recent city manager search, explain their strategy for the Eugene search and outline how they would manage the process remotely. After deliberation, the group of councilors narrowed the list of firms to three.
Who are the finalists?
CPS HR Consulting, based in Sacramento, is offering its recruitment services to the city for a fixed flat fee of $30,000. The firm’s lead recruiter said the company has experience hiring for college towns similar to Eugene, including Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Berkeley, California. CPS also just closed applications for Sacramento’s city manager job, the recruiter said.
Bob Murray & Associates, a Latina-owned firm run by a husband-and-wife team, priced its services at $37,000. The firm recently placed a city manager in Folsom, California, and led a search for Eugene’s public works director about 18 months ago, its representatives said.
The two companies quickly emerged as frontrunners during deliberations. “We’ve come up with a very solid top two,” Leech said.
For the third and final firm, councilors eventually landed on WBCP Inc., which quoted a $25,900 fee. Representatives of the Oregon-based firm said they recently finished hiring city managers for Tillamook and for Santa Monica, California.
Evans called the firm “impressive,” noting his previous work with WBCP consultant Christy Wurster, a former interim city manager in Monmouth and a fellow member of the League of Oregon Cities.
What comes next?
The full council will hold a 90-minute work session July 9 to interview the three finalists and select one. The council’s work on the search will then take a pause while councilors go on summer break from mid-July to early September.
The last time Eugene conducted a formal city manager search was in 2008, when the council hired Jon Ruiz, who served in the role for more than a decade. That search, which took seven months, involved the recruiting firm Bennett Yarger Associates, six subcommittee meetings, a community forum and multiple council meetings.
When Ruiz retired in 2020, then-Mayor Lucy Vinis promoted Medary from her post as public works director to interim city manager, and councilors later approved Medary’s permanent appointment.
Per Eugene’s charter, councilors hire and oversee the work of the city manager, who leads the city’s day-to-day operations.
Medary announced her plans to retire in March. The search for her replacement is estimated to take 10 to 12 months, so there will likely not be a new city manager before Medary leaves in December, meaning Mayor Kaarin Knudson will need to select an interim leader.
Once the search firm’s recruitment process does ramp up, it remains to be seen whether the council will opt for an external hire, as it did with Ruiz, or promote from within, as it did with Medary.
