My offer to serve as manager or interim was made to the Mayor following the 2020 election. The unfolding story of filling the manager vacancy has since created unacceptable conditions for my service:
1. Consideration of adjusting the manger’s authority over personnel runs counter to state statute. AS29, Article 6 defines the Manager Plan. Authority over all staff and officers is fundamental.
2. The Assembly recently amended the manager’s job description to “recognize when assembly members may be in disagreement with the manager and seek Assembly direction before taking action.” Politics is conflict. A manager should not live in fear of retribution; neither can a meeting be held for every decision under consideration.
3. The assembly amended the manager’s job description to delete a reference to the manager’s ability to exercise independent judgment.
The deficit in the assembly’s knowledge of our form of government is dangerous. Its lack of respect for professional management is apparent in its failure to post the vacancy with the American Society for Public Administrators, the International City/Council Management Association or the National League of Cities.
Strangling a manager via a job description, overlooking qualified applicants, offering the job to an unqualified applicant and failing to seek professional managers where they look for work leads me to suggest that the assembly prefers a different form of government. That can be done: AS 29.20.520.
Let’s stop fishing for red herring. Hire a professional manager or call for an election.
Sincerely,
Debra Schnabel