Feuding Council Expects Tough Job Finding Manager : Ventura: An executive search firm may be enlisted to help locate candidates to replace John Baker.

Ventura City Council members, still reeling from their city manager’s Monday night announcement of his imminent resignation, said Tuesday that they hope an executive search firm can locate a replacement that the often-bickering council can agree on.

All that is certain about hiring John Baker’s successor, council members said, is that they will discuss hiring such a search firm at next Monday’s City Council meeting, and that they will consider candidates both inside and outside the city.

Apart from that consensus, council members expressed widely diverging visions of what they want from the next city manager. Some also worried aloud that their contributions to the selection process might be thwarted by their equally strong-willed colleagues.

“I would like to see somebody that has been a very strong manager in government, but also someone who knows the private sector and who has even worked in the private sector,” said Councilman Jack Tingstrom, a staunch business advocate.

Councilman Greg Carson, on the other hand, said he’d really like to hire someone who has worked at a city that’s a tourist destination, to help Ventura strengthen its draw to out-of-towners.

At which idea, Councilman Jim Monahan scoffed. “No, see, that’s inexperience talking,” he said. “We don’t want to get a travel agent for a city manager.”

Councilman Gary Tuttle said he believed the whole selection process was best placed entirely in the hands of executive search experts. Professional headhunters could winnow down a list of candidates to one finalist and present it to the council for a yes or no vote, he said.

“I don’t think we should run the process--especially not this council,” he said. “It’s such a disaster, so ego-driven.”

Indeed, the council has argued for months over selection of an economic development coordinator, a consultant who would be charged with overseeing the city’s economic revitalization. Not only do council members not agree on the role this person would have at City Hall, they have spent hours of council time debating who gets how much input, and when, in selecting from among the various candidates.

Picking a new city manager will be easier, some council members said.

“I think this will actually be much cleaner because we have a job description for the city manager,” Councilman Steve Bennett said.

Simply put, council members say, the city manager is the most powerful employee at City Hall. And Baker, who has been Ventura’s city manager since 1981, is also the highest paid city worker, making $108,120 in salary and $23,957 in benefits last year.

The council itself directly hires only two employees--the city manager and the city attorney. Every other city department head, including the police chief, the fire chief, and the head of public works, is hired by the city manager and answers to the city manager.

In turn, the city manager is the main link between the part-time council members and the full-time city staff. “Without that cooperation between the council and the city manager, you don’t have anything,” Monahan said.

Often, the search for such high-ranking officials can span the length of the state as well as the country. When Ventura hired Baker, the city lured him away from Oakland.

At least one high-ranking city official, Community Services Director Everett Millais, said despite the attractiveness of the job, he doubts that he will apply. He said he lacks the breadth of experience to take on such a wide-ranging job.

“To the extent someone would offer it to me, I wouldn’t turn it down,” he said. “But I don’t see myself as being on a par with the type of candidates they are going to get.”

Meanwhile, Baker spent Tuesday working at his current job, and preparing for the next one.

He will be going into business, he said, with Gerald Newfarmer, the former city manager for Cincinnati who now does consulting work for major cities around the country. Baker and Newfarmer, both of whom plan to remain in their separate cities, met when they worked in Oakland together.

The two are still designing a logo, but they have come up with a slogan. “We’re calling it, ‘Helping People Work Together,’ ” Baker said.