April 27, 2008
Hawk Central Press-Citizen
(Paul Beecher went from City Manager in Kansas, to Dover NH, to Kingman AZ, where he was fired in 2007. Iowa City did not ask him back for a second interview.)
The Iowa City City Council announced today that it has reached a tentative agreement with Michael Lombardo to be its next city manager.
The council met in executive session this morning after completing second interviews on Saturday with Lombardo, former county administrator of Allegan County, Mich., and A.J. Johnson, Muscatine city administrator.
Iowa City Mayor Regenia Bailey said details Lombardo’s contract will be available Monday and action on the agreement will be added to the formal agenda for Tuesday night’s council meeting.
She said both men were “very strong candidates,” but Lombardo stood out in a few ways, including his ease with public input, his ability to research issues on his own and his team-oriented approach to policy.
“I think that really resonated with the council,” Bailey said.
The city invited four candidates to interview for the job in mid-April. Johnson and Lombardo answered residents’ questions Friday morning during a meet-and-greet at the Iowa City Public Library, along with a third candidate — Paul Beecher, the former city manager of Kingman, Ariz. — who was not asked back for a second interview. The fourth candidate, Carl Metzger, Ankeny’s city manager, left the race after the Ankeny City Council asked him to stay.
Bailey said this round of interviews was on a tighter schedule because there is more competition to hire in the spring.
“We had to be positioned to move very quickly,” she said.
The city is looking for the replacement for Steve Atkins, who retired nine months ago after 21 years as the Iowa City manager.
The search that resulted in Lombardo is the second one the city conducted. The City Council brought five other city manager candidates to town to interview Feb. 14 and Feb. 15, bringing two back for a second round of interviews March 1.
Three of the original five candidates removed their names from consideration — Lawrence M. Delo, city administrator of De Pere, Wis., between the first and second interviews, and Michael Matthes and M.A. “Art” Chaudry after interviewing with the Iowa City Council twice.
The remaining two first round candidates, Marketa Oliver, city administrator for Windsor Heights, and Susan A. Stanton, former city manager in Largo, Fla., both said in March that they were still interested in the Iowa City manager position.
Lombardo, 43 and a resident of Hamilton, Mich., has done consulting work since working as the county administrator in Allegan County, Mich., population 105,000, from 2002 to 2006. He said Friday that he wrapped up his consulting projects at the end of last year.