Seven have applied for Luzerne County’s top manager position to date, the citizen search committee said during a Wednesday night update meeting.
The stated application deadline in most online advertisements is midnight on March 10, but one gave applicants until March 11 in order for the advertisement to appear on its site for the requested two weeks.
Under the county’s home rule structure, the three-citizen search committee must seek, screen and interview manager applicants and recommend the candidates it believes are the most qualified to council for its consideration.
Council had asked the committee to present finalists by the end of March, if possible, while acknowledging that goal may be unrealistic.
After reviewing work that must still be completed Wednesday, Committee Chairman Charles Sciandra said the new target is the end of April.
Sciandra said he does not want to wait until May to present finalists to council because the current timeline already means council may not have a new manager on board until June or July, depending on the length of council’s own review and departure notice the chosen applicant must provide to his or her current employer.
If all goes as planned, search committee members will individually rank applicants after the submission deadline and meet privately as a group on March 22 to decide which will be interviewed.
Those advancing will receive a series of written questions to answer by March 27.
The committee plans to perform interviews the weeks of April 3 and 10. No final determination has been made on whether the private interviews will be conducted in person or through a remote online platform.
No post-interview dates were set for the committee to narrow down the pool.
Committee member Danielle Ader, a senior executive recruiter for a private consulting business, said the process must be flexible because it is still in the early stage.
Following past practice, the committee tentatively agreed it will plan to forward three finalists to council for its consideration.
Seven of 11 council votes are required to hire the manager. The current council already set a standard last year of publicly releasing the names and resumes of the manager finalists council received from the search committee and publicly interviewing the finalists. Council Chairwoman Kendra Radle had said that decision was meant to make the “whole process as transparent as possible.”
The manager advertisement is publicly posted on websites of the county (luzernecounty.org), the International City/County Management Association (icma.org), the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania (pacounties.org) and NEOGOV (governmentjobs.com).
The search committee is advertising a base range of $116,322 to $180,000, although the final compensation determination is up to council. Council allocated $145,000 for the manager salary in the 2023 budget, but that earmark can be adjusted.