City Council - Special Meeting

Council for Tuesday, July 9th, 2026. Roll call, please.

Council Member Lopez.

Here.

Vice Mayor Bybee. Present. Mayor Furtado. Here. And then for the record, Council Member Scazzola is absent and Council Member Hines is absent.

Okay. We'll move to public comment. And in case there is anyone online that would like to speak, now would be the time to do so under public comment.

Switch to the other tab, attendees. There's nobody online.

Okay. Obviously, we have no one in the room. So the item of business we have is new business, the recruitment of firm for the recruitment firms and interviews and selection for our city attorney process.

So did you want to make some opening comments? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We're, as you know, going to be conducting interviews today for recruitment firms for the city attorney position. um you all have a binder with the with the applicants materials for each of them we did have a cancellation today so we have a little bit more time we've shifted the applicants to give us some time at the beginning to sort of get ourselves organized as to the questions and the pace of that we've given in the packet some sample questions you're not obligated to ask these questions but We are mindful, typically, in the interview process, we like to ask similar questions, if not the exact same questions. That's not to say that they ask or give a response that needs additional questions and follow-up, and that's okay, based on their feedback, even if it's not the same follow-up that we had with other applicants, based on their question. and then um we'll give some time maybe for council members to discuss the questions and and maybe parse out what you feel comfortable with i know terry will be joining us in a few minutes um i know he has some questions he shared with the uh so we could put them in that uh as far as pace of the interviews what we expect uh is the applicants to come in and give their 10 minutes for their presentation um many uh several uh several of them are um have given us their presentations that we will load onto the screen for you i think data yes they're present all of them or just all of them but one uh there's two presentations one did not submit okay all right so um we'll load their presentations give them 10 minutes and then we have about 25 minutes for council to ask questions uh and i think about five minutes in between so what we said uh uh and then we will have a break five-minute break after each one and then we are intending to wrap up at 435 which gives us about 25 minutes of additional discussion or as long as the council needs to make a selection or any direction on follow-up okay do you all want to decide who would like to ask which question sure

Are we going to specifically ask these questions?

It's totally up to you. We could use this as a guideline, or if you had some things that you felt were missing from these questions, you wanted to ask something, of course.

The only thing that I thought was missing is, and perhaps we could insert this into the first question, is asking about a diverse pool of candidates. And I mean on all fronts in terms of relevant background, you know, not just the same. In terms of diversity, is that what you're saying? Yes. Oh, okay. Yeah. So diversity on all fronts. So perhaps just adding diverse and highly qualified.

Oh, I see. Yes.

That would be. Sure. And then I'd be happy to ask that one. I don't really have a strong preference for questions though.

Okay. Well, you want to start out with that question? Sure.

Okay. Ann? Okay. I'm interested in the last question specifically about the backgrounding.

Which?

The last question.

Oh, okay. And I'd like to ask the one that says their experience in recruiting for an attorney or general counsel position.

Which is?

The third dot down.

Okay.

No, Brian. there. I'm just curious, like a specific person.

So what we don't want to do is have them come represent themselves and then give it to a junior person at the firm. We want to know who's doing the recruitment. They have a senior sort of presence, a presentation, sort of an executive sort of.

By the way, Anne and Sergio, I thought if Brian had any follow-up questions or important things that he wanted to ask, it was important for him to participate in that way. Because after all, he's here supervising day to day and has the closest contact as well as the executive team with the attorney. So there are things that he's aware of or picks up on that we may not be aware of, of course.

Or we could just roll it into the third question too. I'd be glad to ask the second question and then you can ask the third question. Okay. Yeah.

I think that the next question after the third question kind of dovetails into that.

I agree.

I think that can be combined. Yeah.

Okay.

Which you're going to ask Dan. Well, you're going to be asking this question here.

Yes.

It seems like this question is a follow-up to that.

Yeah. Okay.

So you might want to do both. Sure.

Okay.

I mean, I was assuming that they would, in their presentation, they would be identifying who the individual is going to be. Probably so. Ask that.

Okay. Okay. They, in fact, may cover a lot of this in the presentation. So we recognize that you presented on this, but specifically, you can ask that question. Okay. Give a specific answer.

So did you want to ask the, well, if Terry comes in, I guess he could ask it, but did you want to ask the second question from the bottom? Sure. Okay.

Yeah, if Terry's not here.

Okay.

Will Terry be joining in? He should be here by the time we start the first interview. Okay. Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Six. So, six questions in 25 minutes. So, it's about four minutes including the question and the answer. Okay.

And, of course, we can ask any follow-up questions, but at least we're consistent in asking everybody the same question in terms of fairness. So, yeah.

Yeah, and it's probably at the beginning with the applicants just to set the stage that we give them 10 minutes, and then we'll have about 25 minutes questions for you about 25 minutes of time sure um so we'll let them pace themselves and if we get off the timing schedule ada will let us know yeah that's usually what hr does right right so yeah they should they do this all the time they do interviews so they sure know how to pace themselves and if you think ada there's anything that is being left out or it's really not clear either

tell brian or or just feel free to ask it yourself i mean i think it's important that you pick up on things that you have not picked up like so appreciate it and we want to make sure we're thorough in this process i appreciate that are the applicants aware that uh we are going from a contract to uh yes that was described in the outreach uh uh the original outreach right whoever gets awarded this, then they will develop their own recruitment brochures with the parameters that we want.

Yeah, usually they would take our job spec, and I would imagine part of their process is to sit down with each council member and get the ideal candidate qualities of an ideal candidate from each of you. Okay. And then they'll put together the brochure based on that. Okay. And we're still hoping to try to get this wrapped up by the end of the year, I would guess. Yes, yes. yes and you see the timelines they range from 13 weeks to 18 weeks somewhere in there sure so four months which is brings us to december yes yes he's through the end of november and i recognize too now i'm saying all of that that we might have two new council members we'll definitely have two new council members in november uh the second when do we see the new council members the first meeting first meeting is the seminar so ideally we'd like to probably make this the first meeting it's yeah it's the first meeting we do the reward yeah but it but it doesn't the election results be certified have to be certified they have one month she's good yes you look at the calendar however it's worn in on the 15th you were torn into the second meeting yeah because we didn't put 30 days so the so the election's on the third one month then do it because the first is so then we would have to do it at the second one so which is probably good for us in this process it gives us two more weeks so i think we probably want this existing proposal right it is the second one yeah otherwise we have two new council members that weren't part of this process being part of that last year yeah good idea i mean we'll do that you know And we can, we're the selective recruiter once we get to that point.

I think it depends on the certification date.

Yeah, they have up to 30 days.

Yeah, so December 1st will work because they take right up to that point.

Generally.

Well, not always. Generally. Okay, so we have the first candidate in 20 minutes. Do you want to do anything else that we need to discuss, or do you want to just take a brief recess until we're ready? Anything else? I thought I had anywhere to go. Right. But then we can turn off the recording or at least pause it.

Just mute it. Sorry, I'll ask him. I'll ask him.

Yeah, I just want to reflect for the record that Council Member Hines has arrived to this meeting at 2.34 p.m. Is this yours?

It's yours. I was just making sure if it was for the candidates.

No, you're fine. No, you're fine. You're fine. Okay. All right. No. Are you going to take your notes out on here?

Yes. Okay.

No, no, it's fine. You want to put this? You don't need it? Are you going to need it for your presentation? You want them to advance it?

What's that for?

Rosé's presentation.

What?

Rosé's presentation. We'll be sharing it.

Oh, I see.

Maybe you want to pull it up for them first, though, and get them all situated.

Oh, you did it. Very good. Good to see you again. Nice to meet you.

Ann Bybee.

Nice to meet you, council member. Hi, Dan Furtado. Welcome.

Nice to meet you. Hi, Sergio. I'm a little under the weather, so we don't need to shake. Okay, very good. Where would you like me? Either of these two seats, wherever you're comfortable is fine.

Thank you. Welcome. Thank you very much. I think, as you know, the format we're going to follow is that you'll make a presentation and then sequentially ask some questions. So welcome. I'll let you go ahead and start when you're ready.

All right. Well, excellent. I believe we did have a just a very brief. I wasn't sure of the format. So we did have a couple of slides for just mainly the backdrop. I would prefer. Sure. Just to spend the time to introduce myself verbally more so than work off of that. I'm Greg Nelson. I'm one of the two principals at Jose Public Partners. We are a boutique search firm serving public agencies. All of our work is with public agencies. Do work nationally, although the two principals, my business partner, Brian Noblet, and I both are based in California and in Northern California. And we have two other recruiters in Texas and one in Colorado. But we're a small firm. We are a nine-member search team, and that allows us to really control our work and make sure that we are delivering the service at the level we need. We don't spend a penny on advertising. We work completely off of doing good work and in our reputation and word of mouth. And that's really important for us to manage that. All of our recruiters are former public sector executives, so they've done the work and they understand the positions that we're recruiting for. In my past life, I was a former police chief. I did policing for 20 years with the last four as a chief and then transitioned into executive search. I worked for about seven years with one of the legacy search firms, ending as a vice president with that firm before my partner and I founded our own firm. And we're in our fifth year of business now and just continue to really enjoy what we do and certainly would be very interested in working with this council and on the city attorney search. I did want to just maybe explain a couple of defining characteristics that might distinguish us from other firms, because that's part of the reason why that we sought to start our own firm. We just felt like if we could approach the work in more of a partnership with our clients versus a one-way service delivery, that we would have a better relationship and better success. And clearly that's been something that has worked for us. We're highly communicative with our clients. We really like to make sure that we're calibrated, that we're delivering at the level and the types of candidates and process that our clients are looking for. And that helps us achieve better outcomes. I'll keep my, you just advanced one slide please. I did want to mention our work and I think it's very relevant and I neglected to add one search because it's really just opened, but we currently just opened the city of Sedona, Arizona. And then I'm just finishing the city of Lodi. And then in this current year, we also have done city attorney searches. These are all city attorney searches. City of Chandler, Arizona, that was my business partners, was the lead. I led the City of Napa City Attorney search earlier this year in the City of Grand Rapids. Last year, I had the privilege to work with your neighbors next door at the City of San Jose on their City Attorney search, placing Susanna Wood as their City Attorney, and also City of Tucson, a first assistant in McKinney, Texas, an affluent suburb of Dallas. and the city of Lodi for an assistant city manager. So I mentioned that because I feel we have a lot of relevant experience and recent experience and understand the job and understand really what the demands are from a variety of perspectives. And I feel like we could come into that with a head start in that aspect, but also have developed a lot of really strong candidate works in the city attorney space, especially in Northern California. And I'll stop there to give you make sure you have time for the questions that you'd like to ask. Great.

Thank you. You're welcome. So we'll start with Councilmember Lopez here. Thanks so much for being here. First, what is your firm's ability to attract both diverse and highly qualified

Yeah, excellent question. And I think I'll take those separately if I could. For diversity, if you've looked at our materials, if you've looked at our website and our placements, you'll clearly see that that's an important value for our firm. It always has been. And I think our main approach is being attentional. This is a recruitment. So we can recruit people that we want to recruit and to really make sure that we're working to recruit a diverse candidate pool. If we were more passive, the candidate pool is the candidate pool. It becomes what it becomes, but we are not passive. We're active in our recruitment efforts and that allows us to help create more diverse candidate pools. Some fields are more difficult than others. Some regions are more difficult than others, but it's certainly a goal and priority for us. And then the second part of your question was highly qualified. We view qualifications in a few different ways. Experience plays the largest, has the largest amount of weight. We feel like the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So if we want to ensure success, we're going to try to find people that have been successful doing the same type of work in the same type of environment. But we also look at education, we look at risk factors, and we looked at those subjective qualities that are so important for someone's success. And it's a very personal approach, and that helps us after we've invested the time at the beginning to learn, to listen and learn about your city and this council and your organization and what your needs are, and then to be able to match candidates to them.

just ask a brief follow up. You mentioned risk factors will be an example.

Well, there's there's a lot. So there's risks maybe with candidates that have had some media that might be concerning. Maybe that's something that some councils might be more risk averse or risk acceptance to. There's risk of Candace and maybe have been more mobile and have moved more often than we might like because that means that perhaps they might do the same for you. There's risk of not being able to close a deal on a candidate because maybe they can't afford to live in the region and move. Or perhaps their current employer might be apt to counteroffer to keep that person. I'll just give those as an example. I don't want to take up much of your time, but there's several.

So I get the next question, Greg. Can you tell us the individual who's actually assigned to do the work? That would be me.

Our firm's approach is the person you meet first is the person that's with you the entire time. We have a team to support us. Our recruitment team meets every week to compare networks, to make sure that we're doing things in a standardized way. But the lead in the face of the search is the person you're meeting today. You're welcome.

And then part of your recruitment for city attorney position, you've had personal experience looking for a city attorney. As you know, we are transitioning from a consultant attorney to many, many years into an in-house full-time attorney. And there may be some qualities that we might not be aware of that I would assume hopefully your experience would sort of add to that or help us in that way.

yes i i would want to answer that question in two ways one is that um i believe we have three deliverables in any search process one is the most obvious one of the candidates you know you want a diverse selection of highly qualified candidates um but we also want to deliver um a process that's well thought out well understood that really matches your needs And the third is consultation. And to your point, you know, we feel like our role is also to share lessons learned, share what we are able to glean from our work with other clients. And as a recent example, the city of Napa was in that situation. They had an in-house attorney for for many years. Circumstances cause them to have a contract attorney. And then when we just did this recent search where we're bringing it back in-house. So just have recent experience with that particular issue. Okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Rob.

What's the summary of the outreach firms provide a summary of the outreach your firm intends to conduct for the position?

Sure. We source candidates in five general areas. One is to, I'll cover the passive means first. The passive means are those that you probably could do yourself, placing advertisements. It does help. It's not the most successful way to attract candidates, but it does have a purpose for sure. Second is we have a very strong presence on LinkedIn. A lot of professionals are really engaged there as their online version to be able to see things in a little bit more in front of them approach. But moving into the active means, one, you know, when you think of recruiters, the most obvious one is us personally contacting people that we may know already that we think after having learned about your city and your needs might be a good match for you. Just direct recruiting. And that's clearly something that we would leverage. The fourth is similar, but it's calling on people that we know that are in our networks that we're pretty sure are not looking, but they're well connected themselves. Susanna Wood, in my recent placement in San Jose, has just helped me a couple of times recently on some of my other city attorney searches in that regard. And sometimes it's really interesting. We really appreciate it. Some of these contacts kind of turn out to be surrogate recruiters for us in a way where they take on themselves to really, really try to help people that they know advance their careers and connect to the opportunities. And then the fifth means is that we have a program. We have a researcher on our team that's dedicated to going out and identifying candidates that might match what you're looking for. And so these are people maybe we've not interacted with in the past, but we want to make sure we're proactively reaching out to them, trying to get their attention and have conversations about the position to see if it's a good match or if they have someone to recommend. Many, many times the best candidates are not looking for work. They're busy. They're in work. They just are not going home and looking at advertisements. And we focus our job to get their attention and try to get them to have a conversation about this opportunity. Thank you. You're welcome.

So if you're awarded the contract with the city, what is included in your firm's backgrounding of the successful candidate?

Yeah, excellent question. I would say that I'm going to we we step into the background uh midway through the search and and like a funnel it narrows down to the end so First is our interactions with the candidates. We have a series of questions that we really probe into just to really make sure that there aren't any issues that we need to discuss early. Quite honestly, most people we work with are very honest and forthcoming and just ask, and they'll tell you if there are issues that need to be discussed, and that's a huge help. Second, before we meet midway through the search to recommend candidates, we will have already done a very thorough LexisNexis news article search. a uh internet search a social media review we provide all that in a written report with the table of contents to you as our client we don't want our clients feeling like you need to google the candidates and and try to find what you can find it's all there for you you can click on the link it takes you to the article uh the candidates names are highlighted in the article so you can get through it very efficiently um For those of us that have worked in public service, we know the media doesn't always get it right. So if there is an item of controversy, we want to make sure that we're asking the candidate for their version of that and give that to you as well. And so that before you even decide if you want to invite someone, you really know what the issue is, maybe what the candidate's response to it is. And with that information, you can decide if you want to invite them. Moving further, We do a comprehensive series of background checks on the candidate that you select. California and, quite frankly, many states or cities have either laws or ordinances that prevent us from doing that earlier in the process. We can't run criminal histories and credit checks on people unless they've had a job offer, a conditional offer. So that's done on the candidate that you're interested in at the end. And then similarly, our approach towards reference checking is that we it's a balance. We want to maximize the participation in the recruitment by preserving confidentiality and allowing people to compete without their employers knowing that they're interested if they want to. So we assure candidates that they can compete confidentially. But along with that background check at the end, we then do reference checks and we do not just simply ask the candidates who their references are because those will be their supporters. But we'll instead tell the candidates that we would like to talk to, you know, this category, these categories of people and do the reference checks that way. at the end. I will say that it is very, very rare to be surprised at the end. Just having done all the work ahead of time, it's very uncommon. And most people are pretty forthcoming about any issues they've had.

You're probably aware, of course, in the state of California, there are five major areas that cities are responsible for, police, fire, planning, public works, and recreation and so on. So I imagine that your exploration of candidates' qualifications will see that they have some background and are aware of those five areas and work with the department heads of those areas to provide legal advice.

Absolutely. And just to touch upon that, I think that's why it's really important for us at the beginning to invest the time to listen and learn and meet with not just council, city manager, department heads to learn about what the issues and what the needs are here, because it's different for every city. The city of Lodi, for example, land use is a very important practice area that they really wanted to have in their city attorneys because they're growing. Other cities, land use may not be important. But employment law is clearly very important for cities, especially with, you know, this very regulated environment that we're in, which also includes labor relations. And then those topical areas of those departments as well, just depending. We just try not to go into a search with any preconceived ideas about what might be a right match until we've really listened and learned about what our companies are.

Just to pick up from that, I'm always very interested in making sure that the places you're sourcing from are diverse. So not just something like the title or a similar one before, but that you're looking at a private sector. Of course, there's private sector firms that deal heavily with the public sector. So there's a lot of relevant experience, local law firms. state experience. So do you try to fit those different sources?

We do. And you're exactly correct. When we are sourcing candidates, particularly at that fifth step I mentioned with the research, we already have several hundred candidates in our database that both work for public agencies, but also for those firms that serve public agencies. And the value proposition to them is often quality of life because, you know, at some point people will rise high enough and those public agencies are very hard to recruit because they're compensated so well. But earlier in their careers at those firms, oftentimes they're serving more than one client and they're tracking their time in six minute increments. And they have, you know, many other quality of life aspects that the public service can really offer a better service. just quite frankly, just a better career and a better life for them. And so that's the lever we like to use when talking with those types of candidates. And again, going back to your opening comment about diversity, I completely agree that candidates from diverse areas tend to have better experience and we tend to find more diverse candidates in those areas as well.

Can I just ask about timeline? I know in your proposal, we've seen the timeline you presented, and one of the things we were discussing earlier was that we're working on our own timelines because our existing attorney is looking at retirement at the end of this year. Well, we started early in the year, now it's July, and here we are, right? I know just looking at the timeline sort of puts us up against those times, but can you just speak to the feasibility of conducting this between now and December period.

Sure. And that's a challenge for us, quite frankly, when we are drafting our proposals because most of our clients or prospective clients want to see a timeline, but it, we always have to change it to suit our clients. That's honestly. And so we just give you kind of a rudimentary sketch of what the timeline, the major milestones and how long it may take. But typically if, if you, I mean, I'll, I'll give you a, a, Yeah, maybe just a practical example. We just kicked off the city of Sedona search two weeks ago, just opened this week. It's closing in mid August. We're doing interviews in September and they could have someone on board in October, maybe early November. And so if you just shift things a couple of weeks, I think your end of year timeline is very feasible. And the good thing is that you would be the recruitment activity would be earlier. Recruiting in those like November, December times can be really challenging, but you'd be well ahead of that.

Is it safe to assume that as a follow up to that, some of that timeline is us helping with qualities of candidates and the interviews of council members? That takes time. And so at least what I expressed to the council is the more that we can be efficient, that part of it is going to help us longer.

You're 100 percent right. And I say this somewhat jokingly, but somewhat accurately, we're almost always faster than our clients are. I mean, just we're a small firm. We can move quickly. You all have busy schedules. There's many of you to meet with. There's one on the side. And so we typically do get slowed down a little bit by just making sure that we're having the opportunity to meet with the people that we need to meet with at the beginning. And then that's typically the delay that might happen getting the search open and on the street.

And then follow up to that, are those in person or is that telephone?

Post COVID, they're typically by video conference, by Zoom or Teams. I mean, I'm happy to do them in person, but we've proposed our proposals based on one trip that we can do more at additional costs if you prefer that. And sometimes some clients do.

You mentioned that you had five methods of sourcing direct contact media, social media referrals and research. What was the fifth?

Advertising was number one. And we advertise broadly in three general areas. One is general government sites like League of California Cities, Western Cities. Second is through those industry specific ones. There's an International Municipal Lawyers Association. There's some California focused associations that we can advertise through. And then our third bucket, if you will, are advertising sites that specifically are there to help make sure we have a more diverse pool. So we look for those affinity groups that represent people in this field from diverse backgrounds to make sure that we're getting advertising in those sources as well.

In the references that you gave, how many of those are actually working with the council versus, because the attorney here is going to be, it's an employee of the council versus working with an individual like a city manager where they're an employee of the city manager. Sure, what's...

What's that experience? In all of those, it was the council. That's the most common arrangement. Okay. My business partner just finished the city attorney search for the city of Folsom. That was a city manager appointed attorney. But they're actually going through a charter revision to change that to council money. Okay.

And the fee structure that you have, is that a fixed fee?

It is a fixed fee. We estimate what expenses that might be involved, and it's all included just so that you know what your exposure is. There are a couple of options. If you wanted an extra trip or you wanted a... We have a compensation specialist that can do an on-the-spot quick turnaround market compensation study to make sure your salary is set right. That's an additional service, but For the most part, the fee is the fee.

What's your replacement guarantee if the placement doesn't work out?

Sure. We have a triple guarantee. So one aspect of the guarantee that you think of the most is that what you just said, the placement doesn't work out. So if within a one-year period the placement doesn't work out, either they move on or they're dismissed. Mm-hmm. We come back and repeat the search again, only charging our actual expenses, which is typically advertising and just I travel here. Second aspect of the guarantee is the actual process. And so let's say we go through the whole interview process. You interview a group of candidates. You just don't feel like you had the person that you wanted to hire. The same type of guarantee would apply. We would just go back out, repeat the whole process again, not charge anything additional except for those hard expenses like advertising and travel. And then the third part of our guarantee is that we commit that we'll never actively recruit anyone that we placed. There's not a clock or time period. We just will never actively recruit that person.

So they move on to a different job. Exactly.

Or if they come to us, you know, we can't prevent people from applying for positions, but we will never, you know, it's just, we just feel it's not good business.

What's your take on the market?

I think that, so if I could, I'll answer that in two ways. The candidate market, I think this is an area that is somewhat insular and protected. If you think of like, Police chiefs, fire chiefs, city management, city attorneys, those are career fields that people tend to stay in their whole careers. Other fields that are more portable are finance, engineering, IT. People can go from public sector to private sector and back and forth. And we see that happen. We know when the economy is good, we lose people out of the public service to go to the private sector to make more money. And when the economy turns, they come back. But I think the market's pretty static in... in law i'm in municipal law i feel like there's a good supply of candidates um the other part of the market though that's that's challenging that i think would be challenging here honestly is the housing market and the cost of housing and the commutability and i think the ability for someone to move to a commutable area is something that would be a challenge we'd have to overcome and Without knowing any more at this point, I just my thoughts would be we would focus heavily on the immediate commutable area. I think that would be the area that's most fruitful, where we can find people that don't have to move and could perhaps.

Transition easiest and we share the compensation plan.

I don't know that we have. We just approved a new job specification Tuesday night for this position, so we would be glad to share that.

Yeah, I've not seen that yet. But not the financials. We won't. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

Okay. I think unless you have other comments, I appreciate this and thank you. Okay.

Well, I hope I've answered all your questions to your satisfaction. I just would want to close and say, you know, Gamble's a very high-quality community. When we evaluate which types of clients that we want to work with and that we think that would be kind of good recruitments on the market, that's kind of a loaded word. But there's three things that tend to make a recruitment successful or attractive to candidates. One is location. Are you in a place where people would want to be or perhaps their families? And does the location have a positive aspect to it? Second is reputation. Are you, is this a position that's turned over every two or three years and it's challenging and risky for people or just histories of, you know, discourse and toxicity in the council? And third is compensation relative to market and cost of living. Just from afar, I feel like the city of Campbell would be strong in all three areas. The housing costs notwithstanding um you know that can be overcome in some ways but i just do think this is a city we would be proud to represent and i would very much look forward to the opportunity to do that very good thank you thank you all right thank you all right thank you thank you so much yeah appreciate the water

Is there a recent presentation?

I think very well-organized. Teri, I really liked the question in particular about the protection they offer. I think that brought up a lot of helpful information we wouldn't have known otherwise.

So I would appreciate it if we could ask that. Yeah, I would expect that I'm going to ask the same to all. That'd be great.

I thought that was very worthwhile. I didn't think of it. My recruiting daughter who works for a law firm gave me that as some questions.

I think that's a bit standard in most recruiting firms.

We consider recess? If we're considering recess, we can mute it, but not when we should start.

It's interesting he mentioned

Our city executive team went to Grand Rapids, Michigan to look at the system that they have there. And I also had an Army assignment there for four years. So I would go there once in four years. I'm very familiar with that city.

He's always messing with them. Not always. We're still alive.

Any comments from you, Brian, on this?

No, I thought he was well-spoken. You know, it's interesting to always see a recruiter in the hot seat because usually they're on the other side of the table and perform under pressure. I think he was well-spoken. I'm not super familiar with the firm, but I do know they did San Jose's, and San Jose's really happy. Yeah, five years. Yeah, five years. But he represented well. He seemed like he had a systematic answer to every question. I have three things. But I thought that was well prepared.

In other words, he thought about what he might be asked and prepared. Right. Sometimes there's an advantage with a small firm, in a sense, because they're more focused rather than a large firm with a lot of people and chit-chat and everything.

He had researched each of us, too. What's that? He had researched each of us. Ah, yeah. Our backgrounds. Mm-hmm. How do you know that? He asked me. He said I was a fellow Illinoisan. Oh, so from Illinois? Yeah, he's from Peoria. Oh, I see.

Interesting. Well, that's kind of like due diligence on his part. Yeah. I don't know who he's talking to. I mean, obviously, he has a reputation in West Virginia. And it doesn't want to work for some city that's a flake, you know what I mean? And kind of all over the map and stuff like that.

I think he was spot on when he talked about the risk factors and you asked if they said, you know, their ability to move here. And that's immediately what I thought is, you know, if you're doing international or national searches. I think he spoke to that. I think that's usually with recruitment one of our number four issues. Yes. And we qualify candidates within a commutable area. Yes, right. Exactly.

Where is Lincoln, California?

Out near Sacramento.

Oh, okay. All right. There's a big senior adult living facility at the Lincoln facility.

Future location. I'm not interested.

Yeah, for me too. Not even qualified yet.

Yeah.

So the next one's at 3.20. So we have about 10 minutes. He is here. So we can start early if you choose. We need to take a little bit of a break. We can do that.

I just need a few more minutes to finish some of my notes. 10 minutes. Okay.

Okay. Do you want to? Yeah, we'll do a call for recess. Yeah.

You know, he does this.

Really? I would have never guessed that.

Yes.

Hello.

Hi there. Terry Yeons. Terry Geary. Nice to meet you.

Dan Wybie. Hi, Dan. Nice to meet you.

Hi, Dan Furtado. Hi, good to meet you too. Hi, I'm Sergio. I'm along with Greg Weathers. Oh, okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. So wherever you want to sit.

Wherever you want to sit. Okay. That's good. So I did bring

hard copy of the bar. It looks like you guys have finders, but I just wanted to give it to you as well. It's got the proposal in there, but it's also got a copy of a couple of the brochures of the recent searches that I've done.

Well, as you probably know, our procedure will allow for you to make some comments to us for all of it. Okay. And then sequentially, we'll Ask some questions ourselves.

Okay, great. And we have, is it 20 minutes, 25 minutes? So we have 10 minutes for your presentation and then 25 minutes of questions and answers. Okay, great.

Well, so just a little bit about me and the firm. So my partner and I took over Bob Murray Associates in 2014. So I'm one of the owners of the firm. So in the last 12 years, I've been exclusively doing executive-level recruitments in the public sector, primarily positions that report to elected bodies. And that's a little bit different than doing department-level searches. So mostly I've done over 100 city manager recruitments. And with regards to city attorney, city attorney, county council, I've done over 10 myself just in the last four years, both city attorney and county council. So got a lot of experience in the sector that we're talking about here in city attorney. And so I think the experience that they bring, you know, my partner, we came out of the private sector. So I think that's interesting. I think what that's allowed us to do is bring a little bit of a private sector mentality into public search and recruitment. How does that translate? I think we're much more aggressive with our marketing and our social media presence, as well as our targeted outreach. And I'm sure you'll have some questions about those kind of things. But those are some of the things I think are differentiators about our firm. And I'm excited to answer any questions you might have.

Great. Thank you.

Yeah.

Start with Councilmember Wilkins. Great. Thank you. So first, what is your firm's ability to attract diverse and highly qualified candidates?

Yeah. Thank you for that. I touched on a little bit about our social media presence. If you look at our social media footprint, we've got over 50,000 followers on LinkedIn and Facebook and other social media platforms. It's significantly more than most of our competitors. And I think that allows us to get a broader outreach and get feedback. get more attraction and get more attention to a search when we do it. We do a monthly newsletter. We've got 7,000 public sector professionals that subscribe to that. So every time we do a new recruitment, that gets pushed out to over 7,000 folks. And then when you start talking about targeting city of the city attorney world, we've done a lot of work. We've done four recruitments for the California State Bar Association. And through that work that we've done with the that the state association, we have over 7,000 attorneys in our internal database now, right? So we've been able to build a robust database. And not all of those are public sector folks, but a large percentage of them are, right? And then with the work that I've done over the last 12 years, I've got dozens and dozens and dozens of city attorneys in my cell phone. I've got their contacts. I've worked with over a dozen private firms that do public sector work, consulting work. So I've got the folks that I've worked with in other cities that work for firms. So a lot of the... A lot of the success comes from the targeted outreach. So it's not just placing the ads and seeing who applies. It's about who do you know, tapping into your network, making those phone calls. In the Silicon Valley, it's always a little bit more challenging because as you folks know, you're here. It's tough to find people from the outside that can afford to move into the area, right? So We start in a small circle and work our way out because we know that the challenge with relocation and housing and all that kind of stuff. So tapping that network is really important to getting the word out.

And Gary, can you tell us the individual assigned from your firm will lead the recruitment? It would be me. Thank you. Yeah.

And then, likewise, you actually answered this, I think, in your comments, but you've had a lot of direct experience in recruiting for a full-time attorney. As you know, we're switching now from a consultant attorney that we've had for many years into a full-time. You're aware of that and will be able to sort of... select potential candidates for us that have that kind of experience and that you might advise us on in terms of ourselves as we're switching to this new role model right right yeah you know it's interesting cities of campbell's size you're kind of on that cusp right of of of

using a firm or being in house. And I've seen cities transition both directions for one reason or another. Usually it has to do with two things, you know, it's cost and it's, um, the, the, the quality or the level of service that you're getting, right. One of those things isn't working. And so you, you look at switching to the, to the other. Um, in fact, I'm doing, um, County Council right now for Mendocino County of North. It's a rural county. They have trouble attracting folks that want to relocate to a place remotely, a beautiful place to visit, but not everybody wants to live there, right? So I'm actually working with them right now. where we're going down full paths. They put out an RFP for firms to handle the number one share, and they have hired our firm to find individuals that will be interested in the position. And what I offered to do for them at no additional cost was, hey, once we get to the end of the marketing period on both of them, let's pull the list you get together, because they did their own RFP, and I'll pull together the folks that I've got, Let's bring them together and have one pool of candidates. Some of those candidates might be a firm. Some of those candidates might be an individual. And let's interview them all and see what makes most sense for you. So we're doing that also in Palmdale right now. They're looking at firms as well as individuals. So I understand the challenges of the pluses and minuses, I should say, of both. I can speak, having done so many city attorney recruitments, I think I have a good sense of what what the stakeholders in a city are looking for in a city attorney, those stakeholders being the council, the internal stakeholders, the department heads and the city manager. And I think I've got a good sense of what kind of questions to ask candidates to try to find folks with the, not just the legal expertise, but the customer service expertise, mindset of how to deal with internal customers and not being, what I hear over and over again is, you know, we don't want it to be the office of no, right? We, we, we don't want it to be a black hole where stuff goes in and never comes back out. Right. And so being able to ask the right questions to try to, to understand if, um, if candidates understand that their role as a city attorney is not only to advise, but also to, help problem solve and offer creative legal solutions and not just say, no, we can't do that. It's illegal. Understand where are you trying to go? And maybe there's another avenue. How can I help you get where you're trying to go? Right. So I think I understand the job and what, what clients are looking for. And I think that helps me as I talk to candidates.

It's a good comment. I frequently hear attorneys say in the abundance of caution and I know, Oh no, I know what's coming next. Yeah. Yeah.

My turn? Yes. Okay. All right. You talked about your targeted outreach, advertising, and social media. What's your specific intent on the outreach for this position?

So I don't have the list in front of me, and I could share that. I apologize for not printing it out. But we've got probably – somewhere between a half a dozen and 10 places where we place ads for a city attorney recruitment. It's usually about between $3,000 and $4,000 worth of marketing that we'll do. It includes like, we'll pick specific counties that are geographically close, so Santa Clara County Bar Association, the Allen County Bar Association, but we'll pick some county bar associations that we'll place ads in. We'll also do you know western city magazine and public ceo you know all kind of the the normal that we but we also place in a lot there's a lot of different um diversity groups that we belong to through linkedin that um within the legal profession right and um so we've got probably a half a dozen of those different diversity groups so we always want to make sure that um we're we're getting the word out to all those different different groups within whatever profession that we're applying for so we've got several of those um that we have applied for and then we're going to email blast it out i told you about that that list of 8,000 attorneys that we have. They're all California bar certified. We're going to do huge blasts like that. But then we're also going to do targeted outreach where I don't know if you saw the brochures in the back. There's a couple of glossy brochures in there of a couple of our recent, like I just recently did Morgan Hill City Attorney Recruitment, similar size and demographic. And I also did Livermore's a couple of years ago. Those brochures, we actually snail mail those, hard copy mail those to... kind of a short list of folks. Usually there's two or 300 that will mail that to. And that's where we're gonna talk about that small ring here in the Bay Area. We're going to reach out to every one of the city attorneys and assistant city attorneys and all the Silicon Valley. We're going to target San Jose because they've got a really big office, right? We're going to target Santa Clara. We placed the city attorney in Santa Clara, Glenn Gugans, a great guy. He's been there for about four years now. We're going to reach out. I'm going to have a conversation with Glenn and say, hey, Glenn, do you have anybody in your office that you think's ready to... for the next step. So it's a lot of it's about talking to, you know, individuals that I know aren't going to be interested in the job, but they might know somebody who is. Thank you.

What's the fee structure? Is that a, what's your, how do you work your fee structure?

You know, we used to, we used to have a little more complicated fee structure and recently we've just simplified it down. So the number that's in our proposal, the 28,000, that's all in. All right.

What's the replacement guarantee in a candidate doesn't work? So one year. And if it doesn't work out, what?

Yeah. So so if it doesn't work out within that first year, we'll redo it and only charge you for the hard cost of advertising. Right. So I told you it's like that three or four thousand dollars that we spent on ads. But there won't be any additional professional services or fees. I'll be doing that for free.

Okay. What's the average time to fill the position?

You know, a typical recruitment like this is, you know, 12 to 14 weeks. You know, we can do an accelerated, accelerated would be a 12-week timeline. 14 weeks is kind of our average. And if you kind of break that down into thirds, and I know one of the things that that's probably on your mind right now is we're, we're in the last second half of the election year. Right. And so you're probably thinking you want to get this done before that, you know, we can do close to that. So we can do an accelerated 12 week timeline. Our brochure says 16 weeks. But if we've got all the materials that we need to put the marketing together, if you break a search into thirds, the first third is me doing a listing tour. So I'm going to, meet with each one of the council members individually. I want to meet with the internal stakeholders. So that would usually be the city manager and maybe the department heads as a team, just to get everybody's sense of, hey, what's going on here? What are your needs? What kind of skills and background do you need in your in-house attorney? It's going to be hard to find somebody that's an expert in all areas, but there may be some areas where you're seeing a lot of activity and it'd be nice to have somebody that knows that particular area. Gather all that information, develop the brochure, get it out there on the market. That's the first third, right? And that can take anywhere from two weeks to a month. So if we can get that done in two weeks, we've already shaved a couple of weeks off of that 16-week schedule I talked about. The middle third is the marketing phase, right? And we like to keep that at least at a month or weeks. That's where we're going to be doing placing all those ads. We're going to be doing our targeted outmeets, email blasts, direct mail, and me making those phone calls. That's kind of that middle third. As soon as it closes, I'm going to screen all the candidates that have applied, and I'll screen the resumes, and I'll do preliminary interviews, Zoom interviews, with all the folks that have the right background experience that we've said we need at a minimum. And then be prepared to come back and meet with the council on closed session and present my findings to you. You'll get a chance to see everybody that applied, but also the resumes of the folks that I've recommended. And then you'll get a chance. It'll be like a working session. You'll be able to say, Gary, on this list, this person didn't make your cut. Why didn't that person make your cut? And then we can pull it out and look at it together. You don't get huge, huge rules in city attorney world. If we're doing assistant city manager recruitment, we'll get 150 applicants. It's a well sought after job. The city manager, we make it, you know, between 30 and 50. City attorney, we may only get a dozen or so just because that requirement, not only they have to be licensed attorney, but they need to have that public sector experience. So the pool is just smaller. So we might get a dozen or more applicants. There may be anywhere from four to six that have the right background and experience. So we're not talking huge numbers. But I'll present the findings to you. We'll agree on who's going to move forward. And I typically will do a two-round process for a position that reports to the elected body. I actually like to have the electeds, the five of you as a group in closed session, do the first round of interviews. Because at this point, anybody that I put in front of you is going to be technically qualified. So you don't need to put them through some qualifying panel. They're going to be qualified to do the job. We're looking at fit now, right? Who's going to be a good fit? So I like to have the council do the first cut. Because if the five of you don't like somebody, there's no sense getting anybody else's feedback, right? So have you narrow the field down to two or three finalists. We'll then do full backgrounds and reference checks on those folks, and we can talk more about what that looks like. And then I like to have those finalists come back and meet with the internal stakeholders, city manager, department heads as a panel, to get their feedback. that you could then hear their feedback before you have your final interview, because sometimes that feedback you get from those internal stakeholders might drive your conversation with the candidates and help you with your selection process.

What's your take on the market in this area? You said that it was a good perspective on the number of candidates that you would expect, but you feel that is it going to be a big pool or what's your take on any market? Right. Yeah. The housing market that we have in this area.

Yeah. I mean, we talked about the whole Silicon Valley dynamic, right. And it costs a living dynamic. It's not going to be a big point. Those numbers I talked about, I think we're probably pretty consistent, but I would see the other thing that we're seeing across the board in the public sector is, you know, the, the, the, um, It's a candidate's market right now in general for all positions. We kind of go through phases right now because of the baby boomer retirement waves that's been going on for quite a while. The Great Recession back in 2008, it took a while for that to show itself and the fact that cities kind of flattened their organizations, so the next generation of leaders just aren't necessarily there. COVID did another whole thing to the public sector market, so... So it's been more challenging than it's ever been to fill kind of positions across the board, right? I think what Campbell has going for it is I think you're a very attractive city. You've got a good reputation. You know, I think so for folks that are in the Silicon Valley already, there's nothing negative that would tell people, you know... Stay away, right? You know, council, there's a lot of toxic city halls out there right now. You know, they're in the news for all the wrong reasons. I know you guys recently had something a little bit, but that was a little blip. I mean, you know, compared to some of the other stuff that's going on, I think you guys have a good reputation. So I think that plays into attracting, I think, better people. Thank you.

So if you're awarded the contract with the city, what is included in your firm's backgrounding of the successful candidate? The backgrounding? Your backgrounding of the candidate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we kind of do it in phases, right? So step one is... When the filing deadline happens and I screen the resumes and I've decided who I want to do my preliminary interviews with, my office will do a preliminary public record search and a social media screening to look to see if they've got any negative stuff out there, any negative articles about them. So LexisNexis, Google, that kind of thing. That way, if there is anything out there, when I'm having my conversation with them, I can bring it up and say, hey, we found this article from... Here, tell me about this. What's this all about? I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt because you know how sometimes the media doesn't always get it right. So that's the first level, right? Once candidates have become a finalist, then we'll do a more deeper dive on the background. We use an outside firm. um, called higher right to where they'll do everything. They'll verify their social security number. They'll do a DMV check to see if they've got any, you know, tickets or, you know, a DUI type stuff. We'll do, um, civil upper and lower courts checks to see if they're in any litigation. Uh, we hold off on the criminal because by law we have to wait until an offer has been made, but we do everything but the criminal. We do, um, a criminal, Excuse me, a credit history with them, which is different than a credit report. Credit report just gives you a number, a score. Credit history shows every single trade account that they have and whether they're current with all their trade accounts. So it's a pretty detailed thing. We verify their education, their bar, make sure that their license is in good standing. with an attorney will do that. And then we also, the firm that we use to do the background checks also does a deeper social media search to check all of their social media accounts to see if there's anything problematic out there. Then we'll do reference checks as well. And with the reference checks, We like to take what we call a 360 approach to references. So we'll ask candidates for a couple options of peers, subordinates, and bosses so that we can get kind of that 360 look at individuals. Because the best way to predict someone's future behavior is to look at their behavior, right? And so that's talking to people who've worked with them in the past. And so we're going to do all that between that first and second round. So that when you come in to do your final round of interviews, you're going to get a chance to hear the feedback from the internal stakeholders. You're going to get a chance to read the reference transcript of the people that worked with them. And then that sometimes will kind of drive, like I said, drive that conversation and maybe give you some threads to pull on based on that feedback you got.

So do you check references other than the ones that are the candidate supplies?

So it really depends. Typically we will stick with those unless, you know, sometimes our clients say we want to do a deeper dive on a particular, one of the things we have to be careful with is, um, particularly if this person is a city attorney currently and they report to an elected body, if that counsel found out that they were interviewing, they could lose their job in the next meeting, right? So we have to be sensitive to confidentiality. So a lot of times it can be a timing thing. Let's say it was a city attorney from another city and they say, hey, I'm very interested. I don't want to tell my council unless I get a job offer, right? And so then what we would do is make it a conditional offer that says, okay, here's the offer, but it's conditioned on us being able to talk to your current council or anybody else we want to talk to, right? So it's just about timing, but we can absolutely talk to those other folks. Sometimes if we know somebody in the city where they're at and we have a relationship, I might do kind of a backdoor off the record call if I can without putting them in any jeopardy. But yeah.

And what is your experience been with candidates if there is something in their background that would raise a red flag? Are they upfront about it? Or do they wait for you to discover it in your social media exploration?

I've had both, right? And it tells you a lot, right? I mean, to me, I think it shows a lot more integrity if somebody says up front, hey, you know, you're going to see this. Because that's one of my questions when I'm screening them. Is there anything out there? Maybe I did a quick Google search and didn't find anything, but I'll still ask them. Is there anything out there that might concern an employer that I'm not aware of yet? Yeah. And if they say, well, yeah, you know, five years ago, there was this. To me, I would rather know it, present it to you, let you decide if you're concerned about it, then have that gotcha moment later. Yeah. Right.

Thank you. Thank you.

Just one more question. From working with the city councils, it sounds like you've done 10 or so. So I'm assuming you've worked with city councils before. What has worked from the standpoint of us, our city council, to make it more of a successful recruit?

You know, it really comes down to the five of you working well together as a group, right? Because ultimately... at the end of the day, you want to be 5-0 on whoever you pick, right? And so I think the challenge is usually the dynamic of the five of you. And if you folks respect each other's opinions and can work through that, that's one of the things that I do. I mean, I'm a facilitator. So my job is to help facilitate you through the process. And if we get to a sticking point where maybe you guys are kind of a 3-2 on who you want to move forward or something like that, my job is to help facilitate the conversation about let's go back to what is it we're looking for you know get keep the conversation flowing so that you know there's there's usually going to be some give and take and as long as that the the five of you can work well in that kind of a process that's usually where the challenge is okay good thank you yeah

Well, I thank you very much for your presence. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, my pleasure.

See you. Okay. Nice to see you. Thanks for your time.

Yeah.

Yeah. Good to chat with you. There you go. Here's my, I always have to hand out a card.

It's my favorite. Thank you. Take care. that was great sorry i jumped in with all my questions i won't uh i won't do that not follow them maybe it doesn't matter whether they come before or after what is our next four wanting to take a recess yes yes all right Oh, it's San Mateo County instead of Marin Coy.

Is that what you're saying? Marin instead of... Sorry, Marin County, not Marin Coy.

Oh, I see. Say that again.

Instead of Marin, it's Marin County. Oh, yeah. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi.

Well, welcome.

Thank you very much.

Right. Thanks to have you here. As you know, the format will be to allow you to make a presentation individually, and then all of us will ask some questions sequentially and have a conversation. Wonderful. All right.

Thank you very much.

Sure. All right.

And I think you have my presentations on there. Yeah. And I guess you'll just scale advance for me. It's not long. I'm being sure right now. Is it going?

Okay. All right. Well, thank you for having me here again. My name is Sabrina Landreth, and I am the president and the CEO of Ralph Anderson and Associates. Okay. You can go ahead to the next slide.

All right.

Okay, well, I'll tell you a little bit about our firm. We've actually been around for 53 years, actually incorporated in 1972. So people like to say we're the longest or the oldest. I don't like to say that. I like to say we're the original. And we are a national firm really specializing in municipal executive recruitment with direct local government experience. So our recruiters all are seasoned public sector executives such as myself, and I'll get into that in a minute. But really for you to know we've done more of these and really anything else. Next slide. There we go. There I am. So your recruiter would actually be me. I am, again, the president and the CEO of the company. So I would be with you every step of the way from today all the way until the end. So this is not a kind of bait and switch. You're going to then be working with kind of a junior recruiter as we go through this process. I would be your staff, essentially, and have full authority to make all the decisions in the firm. So if anything comes up, That will make a difference. A little bit about me, I actually am probably a little bit different than maybe some of the recruiters that you will see because I've sat in these seats. for 25 years. Most recently, I have run three public agencies in Northern California. So I really do understand all the aspects of city management and specifically for this role to really understand the functional areas of the law. And that's really different than getting somebody who may have just kind of the technical legal expertise. If that's really all you're asking a recruiter to look for, I'd say save your public money You don't need me. But if it's really somebody to come in and really look at, you know, knowing the job, knowing what it is that a city attorney needs to be able to do on a day-to-day basis, work with your city manager, work with all of the stakeholders, I am extremely well-versed in that. And I lead that, again, from start to finish through the whole process. With that, I have a very, very deep network, unique network of top talent statewide, but specifically in Northern California, specifically within the Bay Area. So, you know, you get with me kind of the best of both worlds, which is a recruiting firm that's been around for a very long time with a very, very stellar reputation as being the premier agency out there. huge network within our database. But with my personal relationship and my personal reputation, you're also going to be able to tap into a network of talent that really nobody else can because I've been a city manager, because I've been a general manager in multiple public agencies in the Bay Area. And I do know these attorneys really, really well beyond their resumes. I've placed more than 100 public sector executives, local knowledge and connections, so really understanding some of the complexities within the region. And I don't mean just California, but specifically within the region. And you can't see that last bullet point there, but I really do want to highlight that, which is also the firm and my personal reputation is to hold these candidates to the highest position. highest standards. There's kind of a saying in some of my circles, run them through the Sabrina test in terms of somebody may look good on paper, but really, do they fit for your organization? Are they at the caliber that Campbell really deserves? And we know you deserve the top city attorney that you can get. So really holding people to the highest levels of integrity and accountability is really what I hold my hat on. We go to the next slide. Our approach, I'm going to buzz through this pretty quickly. This is pretty standard. I really like to have one-on-ones with each of you right at the kickoff to make sure that I'm understanding what your needs are, what the top issues are that you think that the city attorney is going to be facing here. And really do recommend that I also sit down with your city manager and depends on kind of, you know, your perspective. how you want to customize this, but also some of your other internal stakeholders. Because really, at the end of the day, this person is going to be part of your executive team. And they really need to fit and gel with that team. And as we get through this, I can tell you many personal examples I've had where that just hasn't been the case. So we go through that, work with you. We have the typical marketing strategy, our screening and assessment, which I do personally, and narrow that down, provide you the search report, and then conduct the verifications, references, and assist you in negotiations and that final offer. Next slide. This just reiterates this in a little more visual way, but I do want to just emphasize those two bullet points at the bottom, and that is that this is really your process. So, you know, yes, search firms have a certain way of doing things, but I really feel strongly every single agency, every single counsel has its own personality, has its own set of needs, your own processes. So, yes, I can lay this out for you. But really, once we sit down and we talk together about kind of what the plan is and what, you know, what you're really looking for, we can customize the process in any way that you that you want it to be. So I just want I like to say that at the onset, this is this is your process. I'm here to serve you. You know, think of me again as your staff person. And then again, lastly, you know, the CEO, I'm with you every step of the process. So you get sick of me. Maybe go to the next slide. So again, Ralph Anderson, why would you go with us? Extreme reputation in the market. We bring that California network, have really great communication, provide regular updates to you, very, very connected to this surge. I take this work very, very personally. I see this as an extension of my public service, to be quite frank. um, and want to make sure that, you know, whoever it is that I'm going to be recommending to you, um, is going to be held to those highest standards. You know, I think of this as, I don't, I wouldn't want to recommend anyone to you that I wouldn't have hired myself. Um, and that's pretty, pretty high. Um, we've been doing this longer than anybody else. And, um, and it's very personalized as I, as I mentioned, I highlighted the placement guarantee there. We do stand by that. Um, we provide a one year, uh, guarantee if, you know, the candidate decides, uh, you know, if didn't work out or you decide it doesn't work out, this rarely happens with our searches, rarely. But if it does, we actually will redo the search at 100% our cost. So you don't even have to cover if we have to do new ads or do new travel, whatever those expenses are. I actually observe that if that's the case. So it's a real guarantee. And I think that is it. So I'm happy to take any questions you may have.

Great. Thank you. Okay. That's exactly what we'll do.

We'll start with Council Member Lopez. Great. Thank you for your time and your presentation. Our first question is, what is your firm's ability to attract both diverse and qualified people?

Mm-hmm. Great, great question. And those two things go together, certainly within the Bay Area. And I would just say for me personally, I have a very good track record of we don't just throw out a bunch of ads and kind of, you know, post and pray and see kind of who comes in the doors is very, again, I would say if that was what you wanted, save your taxpayer dollars, do this in-house. Really with us, what you're looking for is these are gonna be much more targeted outreaches that we'll do. Really looking at, you know, some of those specific caucuses, affinity groups within the law circles, within municipal executive circles, We have a lot of contacts there. Again, our diverse database that we have, and then my personal contacts within the Bay Area. Certainly, we cast that broad but yet targeted net.

Yeah, I had the second question, but I think you answered it. I wanted to ask who is actually going to lead this recruitment specifically. You said it was going to be you, so unless you wanted to elaborate.

Yeah, no, it would be me. And we have a dedicated research team within the firm, but they work hand-in-hand with me. I would be your contact. So we have backgrounders and people that work behind the scenes. We are a national firm, been around a very long time, but we're pretty lean. So it's not like you're getting stuck in a bureaucracy and a morass of hundreds of people. We still within California have less than a dozen people. So, you know, I would still be your main contact.

And if I can follow up on that on your proposal, though, it lists a different person as as the. project director for the recruitment.

Correct. So when we submitted this, we had Heather Rentschler was serving as the lead consultant for this. And I think I said, I hope you all got.

Yes, we did get revised. I may have gotten into your bracket, but we did get a revision.

Okay.

Okay.

No, it hasn't been.

Should we add in her resume that she sent? Yes.

Oh, yeah, the resume's there, but it just specifically says a different person, so I was a little confused. Okay, good. I'm glad you clarified that.

Yeah, no, it would be me. Okay.

As you know, we have had a contract attorney for a very long time with the city, and now we're switching models. We're looking for a full-time in-house attorney, and I just wondered what your experience is in this kind of recruitment for full-time attorneys and You may not know a lot of details about our city yet, but if you've had any comments or thoughts along those lines for us.

Great question. And one that I was hoping that we'd be able to talk about, because not only have I had opportunities to recruit attorneys at whether they are, you know, directly working for a city council or directly working for a city manager or a contractor versus in-house. I've had experience with all of that. I've actually had experience leading the implementation of a transition from in-house. So I have firsthand on the ground experience of actually seeing an attorney that reported to the city manager transition over to directly appointed by the city council. and working as sitting in the city manager seat. So really working through the mechanics of that and understanding some of the nuances and differences and making sure for recruitment like this, one of the biggest things is making it clear to the candidates, the governance structure. And, you know, really, this is going to be, yes, your employee and your trusted advisor, but they also, obviously, are going to be working directly in partnership with the city manager.

Sure. And, of course, we have always had the attorney report directly to the city council. Obviously, the city manager is there day to day and, you know, provides a level of supervision, and that person needs to feel comfortable working with it. But now, instead of a contract attorney off-site who's here for a period of time, but not full-time, we are transferring or transitioning to a full-time in-house attorney. So that was kind of like the basis of my question.

I see. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that. So definitely have worked with contract attorneys, hundreds of them, and understanding, again, it is a certain that may choose that that's the career path that works for them, whether it's certain compensation models that they like or lifestyle issues that they like versus somebody who really wants to be in house. And it doesn't mean there's no overlap between those two, but there are things in the screening process that you really do need to figure out. They've been working for a private firm uh, on an hourly, you know, billable basis. It's very, very different when they're coming in, frankly, you know, having to be expected to be on call 24 seven. Um, so yeah, so those are, so definitely had experience on, on every, every model and, um, be able to, um, to suss out kind of their skillset and, and understanding of this different governance.

What might be your approach then in, um, in looking for suitable candidates and, and, um,

deciding what we might want or what we might need if we miss something well again it starts with you all so going through those individual interviews with you and your and your city leadership and really understanding certainly the key issues that are out there um you know you may have you know somebody who's going to be very very strong let's say in housing or land use you're really looking for somebody who's more of a generalist that's going to be coming in here, right? Who is going to be able to be your trusted advisor and partner who understands risk management. But I like to say there's, is not a no-no bear. I mean, that's really a lot of these attorneys, you know, come in and that's kind of been their style is to come in and say, you know, no, you can't do that. That's not really their job. Their job is to tell you, well, here's the risk.

Mm-hmm.

And you tell them, okay, this is where I want to go. It's their job to figure out how to get you there. So, you know, really being able to figure out with these candidates, they may have, especially if they've been, you know, kind of working for a specific private firm, they may have one specific area of expertise. Are they ready to come in and be more of a generalist, be more of a partner, be more of a problem solver? And that's, again, for me, as I sat in these seats here, have been able to see what works and what doesn't work. Sure. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

So the outreach, can you kind of go over the steps? I know that you've got it listed here, but maybe you could describe the outreach approach that you would take on soliciting candidates.

Yeah, so we take we do do we do place advertisements and we don't want to waste again taxpayer dollars with this by just placing ads. you know, just to place them. It really is personalized based off of what you, you know, we figure out together is the ideal candidate profile. And based off of that, then we place these very, very targeted ads. So, you know, we'll go and, you know, look at the specific bar associations in the area, League of Cities, Western Cities, you know, kind of more general for public sector executives in California. But there could be, you know, within the specific caucuses, women's law caucuses, We have, you know, kind of an ability to do much more kind of smaller targeted ads as well. So those are those get placed. We also have our social media strategy where we do work with LinkedIn and other other social media channels to get the word out, depending on kind of. what that profile is that you want us to target. And then the most important, because again, you could do those two things in-house and save your money. The most important thing is on the outreach, which is for us to use our network, reach out to those attorneys that we already are familiar with, either within the area, or sometimes it could be people, because we have a very big database, it could be people that maybe don't live in the area anymore, but they used to. And they're going to be less shy about maybe the cost of living and making that big move and also have a lot of familiarity probably with some of the issues that you're dealing with. So we actually have an even broader network of people that we look for. And then it's also working our own personal connections. Sure. Talking to city managers. I mean, this is the one thing I think people really forget is the city managers are going to know who the good city attorneys are. You know, kind of do. Everybody talks to each other and know the ones that are kind of like, no, they were such a no-no bear. They didn't help me get that development through. Or, you know, they didn't understand how to really sit and be a true partner and understand the governance structure here. They were kind of off on their own. And so that's really where our expertise comes in to provide that value add where we do the targeted outreach, personal calls, reach deep into our network. With Ralph Anderson, people pick up the phone because of our reputation. And with my own personal reputation within the Bay Area, people really, really pick up the phone. And if it's something where, you know, Again, representing a city such as yours that does have that stellar, stellar reputation, a council that is functional and I've done my homework on this too. And, you know, I only want to help an agency that really wants the help. That's why I'm here. And and so, you know, really being able to sell that to the really good candidates. Most of the great candidates, as you guys know, are not actively looking for a job. And it requires some of that, you know, soft selling that that I would be representing you, you know, soft selling, but aggressively to sell this job, which is a great job, a great job. And there are candidates out there that I know will be interested in this one. And so it's really making sure it's on their radar and they're standing the right fit. One thing that I also do is that when we're researching candidates, I'm not just kind of doing a Google of their name and kind of what their own personal history is. I'm also doing a deep dive into that jurisdiction or that agency, that community that they have been working in to understand, are there issues in that community kind of aligned with the top issues that you're all facing here? So it's kind of even a much deeper set of kind of outreach and research that we do to make sure it's the right fit.

How long have you been with Ralph Anderson?

I've only been with Ralph Anderson since the spring.

Yeah, okay. All right. And what recruiting experience did you do before that?

Yeah, so as an executive running these three public agencies, I led hundreds of executive recruitments.

Okay.

Yeah. All right.

Yeah. It's definitely different sitting in the seat. Yeah, yeah. That's why I'm doing it, to be honest. I saw a gap and to be able to be more of a trusted advisor to you all.

Where did you come from before that? Which agency?

So most recently I was running the East Bay Regional Park District, which is the largest special park district in the country. And before that, I was the city administrator for the city of Oakland and also was a city manager for Emeryville.

All right. Thank you.

So if you're awarded the contract with the city, what is included in your firm's backgrounding of the successful candidate?

So we run a fixed fee. costs that you have there. Everything from my time, travel time, local. So, you know, that's easy. You don't have to, it's very easy for me to get here. There's not any extra fees associated with that. Advertising is all included. Backgrounding is included, reference checks, interviews, the search packet, all of the screening. So in all of our support staff. So everything's included in that fixed fee.

But what specifically do you do to background a successful candidate? What do we do on the background?

Excuse me. I'm sorry. Misunderstood. We don't wait until the end to do a lot of this screening and really sussing out of the candidates. I don't want to waste your time. I don't want to waste my time. So really what we do in the very beginning is a preliminary screening of their education. And for our city attorney search, we definitely do a bar search and look at any ethics violations. Sometimes people will wait until the end to do that. You're hiring an attorney. You need to know that on the front end. So that's something that we will immediately do. And then we also have our in-house research team, which will do, you know, the basic Internet searches. But we dive much deeper into that, not just rest on someone's, you know, an article that might be out there. You know, we all know sometimes it's not totally accurate. So we dive dive into that. And then we also said, we'll make sure that I'm looking not just for the name, but I'm looking at the community. And is that community and the issues that that attorney has been, you know, had in front of them aligned with the issues that might be here. And then as we go through the process, it gets even more robust. So that includes as we kind of winnow down the field, we will do, you know, the credit report. DMV verifications, very typical criminal that happens, but that's only in California. You can't really do that until we have a conditional job offer that's out there. In terms of references, we will definitely do that at the end. It's obviously very tricky with an executive search because there's a certain expectation of confidentiality. Most of these people are going to be employed. Sometimes they'll give you the okay, right, to go ahead and contact their current employer. And when that's the case, that's great. You're going to get that information right away. But oftentimes we, you know, kind of have to wait a little bit further down the road. But we don't rely just on the references that they provide us. I do a much deeper dive. I really like to, again, make sure I talk to the city manager or if there's other stakeholders within that community, you know, really kind of how was this person on the ground really a true problem solver? Our methodology goes beyond just their legal analysis. Right. And you can see, you know, anybody you're going to get that I would I would put in front of you is going to have a strong legal background. The technical side, they're going to they're going to pass it. Are they the right fit for you? That's really what we're trying to figure out. And so that's where I really would do. I do a much deeper dive on the references, not just the ones that they that they provide.

OK, thank you.

As you probably know, in California, local government are responsible for police service, fire service, public works, and planning, of course, and recreation and community service. So will you be also looking into those qualifications of the candidate other than their personal reputation and background and so on?

Yeah, absolutely. Kind of what I what I mentioned before, which is, you know, I have a deep, deep expertize in every area that you that you just mentioned. I have been in the highest transactional offices that I think it's in the state of California in terms of the issues that I've had in front of me, whether it's been in closed sessions or open sessions or frankly out in front of the media. So I have a technical expertise myself of being able to really, really dive into that. I'm glad you mentioned public safety because, you know, that's an area where, you know, you hope, you hope in a city, you're not going to have to face, you know, too much of this, but Too often what happens is a community with a baby, you know, on your law enforcement, you've gone 20 years without having a massive incident and something can happen. And, you know, you're not well equipped for it and you're going to end up having to spend a heck of a lot of money on some outside counsel coming in and not have your in-house attorney who really has, is able to kind of give you that preliminary problem solving and frankly, to help manage that outside counsel. So that's one example of an area of just, again, on the ground expertise that I have that I really do suss out with these candidates. and being on the ground. I think you all can understand, you know, once you get into these seats, even as a council member, you don't really know what the job is, right? So you're sitting in that seat, sitting at the dais. And for me to bring my unique expertise of having sat at that dais, having done performance evaluation for city attorneys myself, you know, that's the type of screening that I can provide for you.

What's your take on the market?

for city attorneys. Yeah. It's an interesting one. So in general, the market for public sector executives, I'm sure this is of no surprise to you all, it's definitely a candidate's market. um it's uh you know just the nature of the the flow of the of kind of baby boomers are leaving for the second time people keep saying they left you know for the first time no no they rebounded back after the recession and then now and then now leaving and it's um and it's a shame because there really hasn't been a lot of succession planning um and so you're seeing a lot of people quite frankly who are getting put into positions that aren't really ready for prime time. And it's not the fault of any public agencies. It's just that they're just, that's the candidate pool. And so that is it's become very, very competitive. And, you know, you also have here in the Bay Area and specifically in Silicon Valley, it's you've got the high cost of living, which is why we would do the search kind of, you know, very targeted towards, you know, people who are probably going to be much more local as a start. And obviously we we go from there. But but the market is it's very it's competitive for attorneys. You know, it's a little more fluid than let's say a police chief where, you know, they're not really going to the private sector and going back and forth, you can, you know, the attorneys will go back and forth. So it's a little, there's a little more breathing room but you know you're not going to get for a job like this 300 applicants. This is just, that's not, that's not what this is. And that's okay. You know, again, we don't need to waste our time. If we get, you know, you really only need one. Right. I mean, that's, that's a reality. And, and, and, you know, that's another thing too, is that, As we go through this process, you know, process matters. But if we find, you know, hey, we've got two people here who are just like heads and shoulders above everybody else. We can also just kind of skip ahead on that process because you do want to move quickly in this market, too, if you can on somebody. So, you know, to answer your question in general. It's extremely competitive to try to get the right Z. With attorneys, there's a little more breathing room because they do move back and forth. But that's, again, why I would say you would hire an executive recruiter. I've done a lot of these where I have not hired somebody from outside because it is so nuanced and something where I just felt like I could do it internally. working with my elected board and the rest of my in-house leadership. On this one, in particular, in the city attorneys in this area, you will get your value for what you're doing. And again, I'd see this as an extension of my public service. I wouldn't be sitting here and pitching this business if I thought it's, it's not worth it to you.

Yeah.

What's the replacement guarantee? You said that it's a one year replacement guarantee. Just elaborate on that.

Sure. Yeah. So we're a little bit different. So it's a one year, but, but it's, it's, you know, you don't have to pay anything additional. So, you know, even if I have to redo the ads, which can be quite pricey and, you know, my time of, you know, kind of coming down and, you know, working through this with all of you, additional background checks, which also can be quite expensive. I absorb all of that. You know, it's one of those where it's just, again, it rarely happens with us, really rarely, but it can. Sometimes, you know, hey, somebody decides this makes sense for them and they get here and it's just not, it's just not, we all bet kind of wrong. Yeah. you know i like to say a bit about about you know 900 but it's not a thousand um so yeah so that in that case you know i just figure this is uh this is on me and we absorb all of those costs thank you that's all okay thank you well we appreciate this for now thank you thank you for the time absolutely uh i should have actual physical cards too so he made me one and i feel like i kind of thank you very much okay thank you nice to meet you thank you thank you very much nice to meet you thanks so much okay thank you so much i'm on the way

take care spend some time and enjoy the music yeah and they got pizza and brats beer and brats i'm wondering if they were practicing in the middle of the interview i think i heard a couple of people the first time we've been meeting and they were practicing oh they're setting up early aren't they oh wow Now, are we going to have a discussion in public comment? We're going to have a discussion amongst us, yes. Yeah, but I don't... I've already called for public comment. Is it going to be recorded, our public comment?

Yes, the public meeting.

Okay.

But there is no one online.

well there is nobody on zoom whether somebody is watching online or on youtube i i would be oh i see that answer but our comments will be uh available to the oh all of them all of the presenters more than just zoom yes this was like our regular council meeting oh okay that wasn't very clear online yeah um so

like normal special meeting special meeting just because it's not on the regular date but everything else is considered a public meeting and is is open to the public okay okay so we have time for discussion if the council wants to or we could take a recess and come back or we could schedule additional follow-up if we need to

I'm right. We might just sort of discuss amongst ourselves if we have a top candidate or two or something like that. I think it might be good to get the impressions that we each have.

Sure. I think they're all very qualified, high-quality firms. It was remarkable. They said pretty much identical things about the market and what would be expected of the pool and just a number of other things, which makes me think that they all have good handle. It's between the first two firms for me. Just for being a little bit newer in this particular position and not having previous recruitments as references, which concerned me, I think she would be qualified and do a good job. But that, compared with the cost of the first two, I think seemed more reasonable. I'm open to hearing if others have strengths.

Ann?

I would rank Mosaic as my top choice. I felt he was presented very well, was very succinct, has very specific client references or positions that he's recruited for. I concur with Sergio on the last one that I City Manager point of view. I don't know that she's really led a recruitment for a city attorney position, and so I think she's lacking in that area. And I'm a little concerned about the change in management with Ralph Anderson. It seems like they change principles pretty frequently. And Bob Murray, I was The presentation was okay, but I wasn't overwhelmed with how he presented and the information that he presented.

Yeah, thank you. Kind of in concurrence there, I think Ralph Anderson and Sabrina would be excellent to be able to be recruiting for other positions, but it's less than a month that she's been in the job. and running it as a CEO. And I think that there'd be distractions that would prevent that, plus not the track record that's associated with it. Between Mosaic and Bob Murphy, Bob Murray, I think with Bob Murray, we'd get kind of a a traditional recruiting of old school type, call my contacts and see who might be there, which could work, but I think a little more of a newer approach would be, I do like the structure of Mosaic and the precision of Mosaic. I think that comes from his background. Having been a police chief, I think that that gives a good perspective on the type of legal issues that we might be seeking out as well. So, you know, all of them are interesting. I was impressed with all of them. The consistency is pretty amazing. So they all have done their homework on being able to do it. And I'm also particularly impressed with somebody that's done their homework and talking with us. And I saw that with Mosaic. He had researched us. And so I think that we'd see that in the recruitment process. So I would be, I would be put it as a Mosaic one, Bob Murphy two, and then Ralph Anderson three.

And I agree, actually. I was very impressed with Mosaic. I thought the presentation by Bob Murray was good. He's had a lot of experience, it sounded like. I think he'd be very capable of it. But I still... kind of like the approach that I heard from Mosaic. And I would probably also list Mosaic and then Bob Murray. Just one of those two for this position. So first of all, I'll ask either Stata, if you like, or Ronnie, any comments from your perspective?

I think your input is spot on. I don't disagree with any of that. And I think Ralph Anderson comes with a lot of city manager experience, and I felt like the responses came from that experience, not the experience of the receiver. So I think you're spot on with that. And as a matter, as much as they talk about the fit with the candidates and us, it's a fit between them and us. And I clearly hear the council saying you feel that fit rather than psych, and I think that's spot on.

I feel like your observations are exactly what I was feeling, especially on the HR standpoint, so I appreciate that.

Andrea?

I'm just clerking the meeting.

Okay, all right. So, well, I mean, it sounds like... For now. It sounds like while we all agree that Mosaic and Bob Murray are reasonable choices, we prefer Mosaic. And I'm happy to go with it. Yes, if there's no... I'm good with that.

Do we want to take a motion to direct staff to pursue on that consultant and looking forward with the contract?

I think so. That consultant being Mosaic? Yes. Okay.

I'll make that motion.

I'll second.

Second.

Did you get that, Andrea, what Brian said? Pretty much. I motioned and seconded.

I officially take a vote. Yes. Sorry, my computer. Okay.

And it's specifically with Greg Nelson.

let's let's and he he did say he yeah yeah he did but if if we get into a flip on that that's what i want to protect okay so council member lopez council member heinz hi vice mayor baby hi and mayor as a matter of just follow up the agreement and the price

with the agreement, then we'll touch base with the council on next steps. So you're kept informed.

And one question I had, Brian, I forget which one said something that triggered me about a certain candidate might have expertise in one area like land use and not in labor. Are we going to make it clear that we have expertise an outside firm that deals with labor and that the attorney would not be, that wouldn't be a primary function?

Yeah, I think when we talk about ideal candidates, we can get into that for specifically and they can provide that input as well so that they're informed, sort of come in, hit the ground running.

I mean, obviously you would expect one to have some knowledge of it, but we do have expert in the area.

But I also think this offers us the opportunity. I don't necessarily disagree with that, but we could say we want someone with that expertise and then contract other services. I just I wouldn't want options presented to us before Just like we didn't predispose that we were going to keep a contract attorney in the process. I don't want to predispose. I want to keep the rest of the structure.

I wouldn't say that we're not open to it. I think we're open to all of it, but just so they understand where we're comfortable now. And we kind of shored that up. It may be a different arrangement with that attorney.

But I would concur with Council Member Lopez. I think that's a good perspective to put it out there, unless we really like that, but we don't. I'd like to see alternatives as well.

I somewhat disagree, but, you know, that's... Clearly, we're very happy with our firm that we work with on labor and personnel. the recruiter understand that. But yet, if we get candidates with strong skills in those areas and they outweigh other things, I think it's up to the recruiter to help us weigh those things. But I would make sure they're clear on what our arrangements are.

Okay.

And we may end up deciding we want to keep the current arrangement. I don't have an issue with that. I just want to just help them understand where we are now.

So that is they're talking. There may be a pivot, but that they understand that's a pivot, but they understand where our comfort levels are and what duties are going to attorney.

So I guess the perspective would be that we'd want to really our ultimate role is land use. So maybe what we want to have is a lawyer that's focused in on land use. Is that kind of what you're thinking?

I also think in the one-on-ones we can share our perspectives and we don't have to all have the same exact perspective right now.

Well, I just think that HR and labor is a pretty isolated or specialized focus that really serve with Whitmore and Bologna and Rick have served the city well for for many years and um so especially I just want to be sure that that area is still covered and it but maybe it's I guess it would be more like you know

We'll hire the attorney to meet our needs, but our intention initially is to keep those attorneys we've worked with in these special areas for the time being, unless something would cause us to change our mind and at which time we would have to consider it and vote amongst ourselves. Okay. Okay, so for purposes of this meeting, I will adjourn it.

Good job.

Thank you.