The Haines Borough Assembly emerged Tuesday from a 45-minute closed-door session to confirm interim manager Brad Ryan’s decision to negotiate a police chief contract with Heath Scott, deputy chief of the District of Columbia Protective Services firm in Washington, D.C.

Neither Ryan nor assembly members provided any public explanation for the decision at Tuesday’s assembly meeting.

In an interview after the meeting, Ryan said finalist Timothy O’Neill dropped out of the running almost immediately after visiting Haines for in-person interviews the weekend of May 13-14.

“We talked early on and he really just wasn’t as interested to talk about coming here as the other two were. He was out really early, like the day after he got back home. We chatted and it just didn’t seem like it was going to work out for him,” Ryan said.

O’Neill rose through the ranks from officer to investigator to sergeant in La Crosse, Wis. over the past decade. He did not return multiple calls for comment.

The third finalist who came to Haines with O’Neill and Scott was Dave McKillican, who has served as Hoonah’s police chief since 2014. McKillican also has worked in law enforcement jobs in Fort Wainwright, Fairbanks and Fort Yukon.

When contacted Wednesday, McKillican said he was offered the job but turned it down on Tuesday.

McKillican said he declined because there was no guarantee he and his family could find adequate housing. “When I came up for the interview process, (my wife and I) came a couple days early and stayed a couple days later just to look for housing, because we were told it was going to be challenging,” he said.

Ryan this week said he never made McKillican a formal offer, and that he was negotiating with both Scott and McKillican simultaneously.

“We didn’t settle on a formal offer, no,” Ryan said. “Nothing that was like, ‘This is it.’ We had some negotiation back and forth.”

McKillican said Richard Fursman, president of the headhunting firm that the borough hired to find a new police chief, called him several days ago. “He was extending an offer from the borough,” McKillican said. Fursman helped facilitate the hiring negotiations.

When asked directly if Ryan offered him the job, McKillican replied with no uncertainty: “Yes, he did offer me the job.”

Ryan maintained he was talking to McKillican and Scott “concurrently” and never officially offered McKillican the job.

“Everybody has their interpretation of the timing and how things happened,” Ryan said.

“One of the issues that we discussed with (McKillican) was, ‘What do you want if you’re going to come here?’ and housing was a big deal for him. We weren’t really on the same page on that,” he added.

Last week, Ryan said he was in negotiations with “a police chief” to reach a contract agreement, but he refused to name the candidate.

McKillican said he was “heartbroken” and “torn up” that the Haines position didn’t work out.

“We just couldn’t make the housing thing work,” he said. “It would have been nice to come there. I really, really enjoyed the community. It seemed like a really great fit.”

Interim chief Josh Dryden has publicly voiced his support for McKillican, whom he has previously trained under. Dryden said he is “trying to maintain a positive outlook” on Ryan’s decision to hire Scott.

“I want to give the guy a fair shake. I want to give him a chance,” Dryden said.

Ryan said he is still negotiating with Scott. “He can still turn it down if he would like. It’s still in negotiations back and forth. We’ll see if we come to an agreeable contract. He has something in his court and he can decide if he wants that or doesn’t want that,” Ryan said.

The Public Safety Commission voted 3-0 on May 14 to recommend Scott’s hire after a 30-minute closed-door meeting.

The commission makes a recommendation to the manager, but the manager is ultimately responsible for making the hire, subject to confirmation by the assembly.

Scott worked the past eight years as deputy chief of the District of Columbia Protective Services Division in Washington, D.C. Scott called his department a “boutique agency” responsible for protecting facilities and government employees. He also worked as a deputy sheriff and police officer in Arizona from 1995-1998.

Former interim chief Robert Griffiths sat in on staff interviews with the three police chief finalists, but said he didn’t have a favorite choice, even though he was being pressed to choose one.

“That’s exactly what they wanted me to do, and I was not willing to take that on,” Griffiths said. “Every single one of them was qualified in a basic fashion to do the work. Having said that, every single one of them had issues that all of us were concerned about.”

The assembly hired the executive search firm Brimeyer Fursman for $27,000 (plus an additional $10,000 in expenses) to find the municipality’s next manager and police chief.

Candidates from the initial pool of 10 semifinalists have continued to drop out of the running, and Griffiths said he thinks the recruiting process is acting as a reality check in terms of what quality of candidates the town can expect with the compensation package it offers.

“I think some of that is hitting them as they start to do this recruiting effort,” he said. “Once people determine what it is really going to cost them to move to Haines and live there – and in some cases support a large family – they think twice about it.”

A pay range of $75,000 to $95,000 was advertised for the police chief position.

Brimeyer Fursman reported 27 candidates applied for the job. It forwarded 10 semifinalists to the borough’s Public Safety Commission. The commission narrowed the list to four candidates. Ryan chose two of the commission’s four and added Scott to the mix after two other finalists dropped out.

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