The city of Española might not have needed to spend $10,000 in a search for its next city manager after all.
A majority of city councilors now say they support retaining City Clerk Veronica Albin as city manager, a move that could put the Council at odds with Mayor Joseph Maestas and derail the $10,000 job search he helped initiate.
In June, Maestas authorized outgoing city manager Gus Cordova to sign a $10,000 contract with the Mercer Group, a national management search firm, to find his replacement. Albin was chosen to serve as interim city manager during the search.
Since then, the Mercer Group has turned up a pool of 12 applicants. Eight of them currently work out of state. Maestas said the firm will now cut down the number of applicants and turn over its short list to a selection committee made up of Maestas and Councilors Chayo Garcia, Cecilia Lujan and Alice Lucero.
But a majority of the eight Councilors have said they favor retaining Albin instead of hiring a new city manager, despite the fact Albin has not applied for the full-time position.
“We’ve got about a year and a half to go until four of us are up for re-election,” Councilor Cecilia Lujan said. “(Albin) has been here and is familiar with what’s going on. It’s going to take us how long to finalize this and, if we bring someone in, it will take them at least a year to get up to speed with everything.”
One of the only concerns raised by councilors about Albin serving as city manager through the next election, was what the city would do about the position of city clerk.
“I think (Albin) is doing an excellent job,” Councilor Chayo Garcia said. “But she’s spreading herself so thin. She’s good, she’s smart, she’s people savvy and she makes everyone accountable for what they should be doing, but if we keep her as city manager what do we do about our city clerk?”
Lujan and Lucero and their fellow Councilors Eddie Maestas, Alfred Herrera and Danielle Duran have all said they would consider keeping Albin as city manager until the 2010 election.
Along with Garcia, Councilor Helen Kain-Salazar said she was hesitant to keep Albin as city manager.
“She’s doing a great job, but I don’t think she has the degree to hold the job permanently,” Kain-Salazar said. “And it’s a lot of juggling. We need a city clerk and when (Albin) is gone we have to pull someone else to fill-in.”
Councilor Dennis Tim Salazar said he has been happy with Albin’s performance, but he wants to consider the applicants.
Herrera said he was open to considering the city manager applicants, but said if he had to make a decision immediately he would keep Albin in place as the city manager.
“It could take a city manager six or seven months to find the bathroom,” Herrera said. “And another five months to figure out how to contact all of the state and federal legislators. We’ve been down that road before and it takes a lot of time for an outsider to get to know everything.”
Maestas has the authority to appoint the city manager, but his decision has to be ratified by a majority of the Council. Maestas appointed Martinez to the interim position June 2 at which time Cordova went to a part-time schedule with the city until his June 30 departure.
“I think (Martinez) is doing a good job in an interim capacity,” Maestas said. “But having someone without prior city manager experience isn’t a permanent solution.”
Maestas said he was unaware of any desire on the part of the Council to retain Martinez as city manager.
“It would be a bad scenario,” Maestas said when asked what would happen if the Council did not ratify his choice for city manager. “It’s a classic example of taking another course of action after we already started one.”
Albin was appointed to her position as city clerk in March 2006, just after Maestas and his slate of council allies won election to office. Prior to her appointment, Albin managed her father’s bar, Martini’z.
Albin graduated high school, but never earned a college degree. Albin said she studied business law for three years at the College of Santa Fe and the University of New Mexico-Los Alamos but never earned a degree.
On paper, Albin doesn’t qualify for the job. The job advertisement from the Mercer Group states candidates must have a bachelor’s degree in public or business administration or a related field, and that a master’s degree would be ideal.
In addition, the advertisement requires that applicants must have at least seven years of “senior management experience at local governmental level or higher.”
But some councilors said Albin has already proved she is capable of handling the position of city manager.
Councilor Danielle Duran said Albin has been more effective than a lot of the city’s previous city managers who held various degrees and professional accolades.
“Usually it would bother me, but I’m not someone to overlook someone’s obvious abilities for a piece of paper,” Duran said of Albin’s lack of a college degree. “For the things she doesn’t have a handle on, she knows how to delegate responsibility to department heads and work with city staff. A lot of the official people before her have been incapable of doing that. They want to be project managers and have their fingers in everything instead of letting staff do the job they’re paid to do.”
Duran added that it would not be beneficial for the city to replace its city manager and start all over with training that person.
“(Albin) is doing the things we want her to do,” Duran said. “Why would we trade that for someone new who will take six months to get up to speed? At this point in the Mayor’s administration, it would be difficult to get someone up to speed on doing the things we need to get done.”
Maestas firmly denied any hint that his administration is a lame duck, which was his own term.
“We’ve still got a lot to do,” Maestas said.
In a July 29 email to the Council, Maestas urged the Council to continue working with the Mercer Group to find a replacement for Cordova. Maestas said that once the city is forwarded a shortened list of candidates, the process should move much faster than its current pace.
“I expect the process to move much more quickly once that happens to insure this transition is as brief as possible and we can demonstrate that the city funds used to hire the Mercer Group were well spent,” Maestas said in the email. “It is important that we forge ahead and see this process through. Some citizens have approached me and are concerned about the funding and time wasted reconsidering established courses of action. There are some really good candidates that have applied that could hit the ground running.”
Herrera and Lucero both said they did not agree with Maestas’ decision to hire the Mercer Group.
“I would have taken that $10,000 and bought some high-tech cameras to help catch some of the kids tagging the city,” Herrera said. “I think we could have really put that money to good use.”
The decision over who will serve as the city manager could lead to another flare-up in the Council’s on-again and off-again feud with Maestas.
The Council has agreed on very little with Maestas in regard to Cordova’s resignation, which built up over the course of several months.
Maestas came to the aid of Cordova several times throughout his tenure at the city. Last summer, Maestas narrowly headed off the Council during a tense moment in which Cordova was berated for hiring a union negotiator that the Council said it asked him not to hire.
In March, Maestas actually rejected a resignation from Cordova and tried to persuade him to stay. When Cordova again submitted his resignation in May, Maestas negotiated an agreement with Cordova to retain him on a part-time basis and authorized Cordova to sign a contract with the Mercer Group, two moves that angered several councilors.
Regardless of Maestas’ past spats with the Council, Maestas and councilors said they are anxious to finish the hiring process.
“It’s taken too long already,” Maestas said. “Any mayor would want to expedite this process in order to maintain some continuity.”
Editor’s Note: Interim City Manager Veronica Albin was recently married and changed her name from Martinez to Albin.