Santa Paula to Renew City Manager Search

After failing to reach contract terms with their latest preferred candidate, Santa Paula must again begin recruiting candidates for its vacant city manager post.

Officials of this Santa Clara Valley community were unable to work out a contract with their top candidate after about two months of negotiations, Mayor Robin Sullivan said Thursday.

“We will have to go and basically start over again,” she said. “I’m not concerned that we haven’t found the right person. . . . We’re looking for someone who is going to be able to fit into this community.”

Santa Paula officials have been repeatedly stymied in their 13-month attempt to fill the city’s highest administrative position, which pays $90,000 to $100,000 annually. The job became available in June 1996 when Arnold Dowdy left to take a job with the county.

In January, the three leading candidates for the job all pulled out of the running for various reasons.

More finalists were chosen from among a 52-person pool, but by April city officials were forced to expand their short list again after one of their two new finalists withdrew from consideration for family reasons.

Sullivan said she doesn’t think the lack of a permanent top administrator has hurt the city.

The style of interim City Manager Murray Warden has been criticized by some council members and residents as being too abrasive. But, Sullivan said, he is getting things done.

“There are projects that have been sitting around for years that are now being implemented,” she said, referring to such programs as the long-awaited revitalization of the city’s downtown that is about to get underway.