The Haines Borough Assembly will conduct preliminary interviews with three manager candidates this week.
The assembly committee-of-the-whole meeting starts at 3 p.m. Friday. The first interview is set for 3:30, with current interim manager Brad Ryan. Ryan is the borough public facilities director who is in his second temporary stint as interim manager.
An interview with the other local candidate, Debra Schnabel, follows at 4 p.m. Schnabel is the Haines Chamber of Commerce Director. She is also a former assembly member and borough consultant.
Both local candidates will be interviewed in-person.
Finally, Michigan county administrator Patrick Jordan’s phone interview is set for 4:30 p.m. Jordan was previously assistant city manager in Unalaska and borough manager in Bristol Bay.
Jordan was a finalist for a manager job in Sitka as well. But this week, the Sitka Assembly abruptly dropped him from its shortlist. Mayor Matt Hunter said he had reservations about Jordan. He did not say publicly what those reservations were.
The interviews are open for the public to observe. The final candidates will be invited to participate in a more rigorous interview process that includes questions from the public.
This story has been updated to reflect Patrick Jordan’s removal from the Sitka manager shortlist.
Perhaps the committee could ask the candidates if they, as manager, would tell the police chief to release the police report. Of course we know that Brad
Ryan won’t because he has had the chance to do exactly that for awhile as he has been and is being the manager. The assembly of course could tell the manager and/or police chief to release the police report in full but they seem to be scared, or don’t realize they have the authority or just don’t care. Be interesting to find out which is the case. You’d think with Margaret Friedenauer being an ex journalist and Heather Lende being a writer and Morphet being a newspaper man that someone would care enough about open records and transparency in our public agencies to make a motion but going by their actions, no. Too bad. Sad to see Haines getting chumped.