This is a very important thing for Ramsey, the choosing of a replacement City Administrator to take over after James Norman's departure. Council will be conducting in depth interviews today, Friday the thirteenth, for the six.
During the day yesterday department heads and staff had the opportunity to meet the candidates before the public session.
The food at the reception was plentiful and there was no Koolaid so the adage - Don't drink the Koolaid - was inapplicable.
General impressions: Candidates ranged from Virginia with legislative experience and Colorado with Minnesota ties, to individuals from Austin, Minnesota, Mounds View, and Brooklyn Park - out-state people and local people.
Six white men. No women. No Hispanics.
The search firm rep was a black woman. Hence, diversity aims were probably not ignored in screening and recruiting - aka head hunting - and two-career families often are reluctant to move to accommodate the female spouse. While disappointing in a way, it is how it is. My recollection of the council search committee - Strommen, Olson and Elvig - suggests no gender bias in the process, only luck of the draw.
Two were less impressive to me than the remainder - but no Normans in the bunch - and two looked best, to me. Beyond that, no naming names. The decision is not mine. There was a range of ages from my contemporaries - grayed and experienced - to possibly younger than Look or Strommen.
Patrick Trudgeon is one of the six finalists. I think it good that he was not screened out simply as the devil we know. I like the process more for that decision.
Of the bunch, none gave the impression I was talking with a Ralph Brauer level of brilliance; with Patrick closest by that measure. A Ralph Brauer level is rare, so lack of it is no major indictment. While "planning" is not without its critics, myself included, the planning staff now at Ramsey - Trudgeon, Frolik, Geisler and Dalnes, review all the crabgrass the developers tender and screen and recommend things aimed at fostering city interest. Someone has to do that.
On screen, each planner cogently and tersely presents a case to council, and each has prompt sensible answers to council questions. Given that work sessions are not televised and the same questions likely are asked there as on camera, one expects benefits from repetition.
Dalnes impressed me in particular at one RAMSEY3 session, by confronting one of my premises in a way nobody else had; telling me that she liked the D.R. Horton legoland corner of Town Center, and would like living in one of the units, which she said were laid out nicely. I never cared to look. I think she's wrong and the Horton stuff is unusually ugly and a put-off, ugly as sin, yet nobody else stood to contest my bias in that regard in an open and friendly way as Dalnes did, or in any way at all. Perhaps everyone else agrees with my view or no one else care's what I think. I see merit in either of those possible views. But I digress.
Frolik and Trudgeon did the junior staff hiring, with Norman then a factor, and I think it shows Patrick can pick and land good people, by himself or with others.
I liked the guy from Virginia. With legislative experience he gave quick and direct answers to anything I asked and he listened. No spiel, BS, or saying what he thought somebody expected to hear. Why he'd move here, I could see trade-offs, with the East Coast more built up in general but his location on an Interstate between two urban hubs.
Bob Ramsey and the folks friendly with Mike Jungbauer were not there nor the business group, unless I did not recognize some of them. I met some people I had not met before but who may have been at some of the RAMSEY3 sessions. When I did mention RAMSEY3 to the candidates, none of them gave a confused look or said, "Huh," so my guess is they had some discussion of that while meeting staff. Some of the north end property owners who had been at city meetings previously were not there. It was a fair but not big turnout. It was something featured at the top of the city website for a number of days, so in a way the turnout was disappointing.
Having met the six, with Trudgeon being familiar to most people in Ramsey, it will be interesting to me to see what the council decides.
My understand is in personnel matters such as this a procedure resembling Mafia omerta applies, and we wait as they deliberate, for a puff of white smoke from a chimney or some such notice.