If all goes well, Leelanau County may enter negotiations to hire its new fulltime administrator by the end of today. This morning, the two finalists for the position — Northport Village Manager Jim Dyer and MediaNews Group Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Mark Brown — will start their second round of interviews. The county board may offer a one-year contract to their preferred candidate.
Brown is up first, with an informal meet and greet with county employees at 9 a.m. today, followed by an interview with commissioners at 10. Dyer’s meet and greet with employees starts at the same time. He will then have his own dialogue with the commissioners at 11.
Brown holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Michigan and currently works as CFO for MediaNews Group’s Michigan and Ohio region. As a certified public accountant, Brown feels that he has the skillset for the administrator position, according to his cover letter. He also cites his collaborative skills and “ability to present financial information to non-financial folks.”
Dyer’s resume says he has 30 years of experience as a municipal lawyer and was mayor of Marshal, Michigan, from 2011-2014. It also says he also implemented the transition of the administrative authority in the Village of Northport into the position of manager, in which he currently serves. He says his mediative experiences make him well-suited for the administrator role.
Chet Janik, a former Leelanau County administrator now working as their consultant, said that the second round of interviews with the board of commissioners are meant to spark more of a dialogue between the elected officials and the two most qualified candidates for the position, compared to the questionand-answer format of the first round.
“I’ve done this six times in the past year. It’s never been the case where within three to four days, we have not had a verbal agreement with the candidates in any of the searches that I’ve done,” Janik said Tuesday. Janik will be attending the interviews virtually due to a prior commitment in Marquette.
The new commissioners-elect — Rick Robbins, Mark Walter, Will Bunek, Alan Campbell, and Steve Yoder — should also be seated across from the two finalists, per prior discussions. The current board of commissioners decided to offer them a seat at the table, both figuratively and literally, since the next administrator will be working with them extensively once their terms begin in January.
The new commissioners will be able to ask their questions to the candidates, but they can only influence the decision to hire indirectly. Only the six current commissioners, whose terms end this month, can vote to extend a job offer. They may conduct a straw poll so the current board can gauge the commissioner- elects’ reactions to the two candidates, however.
“The bottom line is there are no legal concerns regarding having the commissioner elects be a part of the process up here of asking questions, (but) the only individuals that can make a formal decision in a vote are you six,” Interim Administrator Richard Lewis explained. “That’s it.”
Lewis sought a legal opinion on including the commissioners- elect in response to email correspondence from the new District No. 5 commissioner, Campbell. Campbell asked that time be provided for the finalists to meet the newly elected officials, since “it will be the expectations and missions of the next county board, not present commissioners, that he will meet and accomplish.”
Janik said he expects the incoming and outgoing commissioners to generally agree on the chosen candidate. Yet he also said that if they offer a contract, they should seek to complete the process before the current board terms end, to avoid similar problems to what Ottawa County is currently experiencing in their administrator search.
“If there’s not a signed contract by Dec. 31, in theory, the board could come and start the process from the beginning. I’m not sure they want to do that, but they would have that legal option. I think that’s a bit of the concern with what’s going on in Ottawa County, because the incoming board and outcoming board have different feelings on who the candidates should be,” Janik said.
The county administrator is the employee tasked with implementing all the county board of commissioner’s directives. The salary range for the position will be $110,000-140,000 plus full county benefits.
The county hired Janik as a Michigan Leadership Institute (MLI) consultant to find a new administrator/CFO in March 2024. They amended the contract in October after a series of unsuccessful interviews for this dual role, so Janik would search for an administrator again. The county’s total contract costs with the MLI are $8,750.
Lewis, a former Traverse City mayor, has been serving as Leelanau County’s interim administrator since April. His contract lasts through May 2025 or until a new administrator is hired.
