JANESVILLE—The city of Janesville hopes a daylong set of public input sessions on Tuesday will allow residents, business groups, city employees and others to sound off on what kind of city manager they’d like hired.
The city plans to break up its City Manager Recruitment Public Input Day into four sessions spaced throughout the day. In those, the city will tap people on what skills and qualities they seek in a new city manager to replace outgoing manager Mark Freitag.
Freitag departed Janesville last week to take a new job as city manager in the Denver suburb of Westminster, Colorado.
Human Resources Director Tara Semenchuk said the sessions will be similar to a process in which the city gathered public input prior to launching a search for the last city manager. That ultimately resulted in Freitag’s 2013 hire.
They’ll be a precursor to the official launch of recruitment for Freitag’s replacement, being orchestrated by Government Professional Solutions, a search firm hired by the city.
Semenchuk said the city council has voiced that it is “very important” to gather public input prior to the city manager position being posted.
“The position has not been formally advertised yet, so it’s not officially out on the street,” Semenchuk said. “This is an information-gathering stage for our consultants really to find out the city of Janesville is looking for in their next city manager.”
“Then, with that information, they’ll be able to create the ideal candidate profile and create tools to help evaluate the candidates during the recruitment process.”
Each of the four sessions of the public input day are open to anyone who wants to hear the public input. But each of the sessions is structured specifically to gather information from specific groups, including city employees, residents and business and nonprofit leaders.
That means the input sessions won’t be a roundtable for all those attending to offer comment.
Semenchuk said that structure will organize and focus the public comment day to allow groups such as residents, business operators and city employees their own specialized forum to offer input.
What: Public sessions to gather input on what qualities and skills residents, business leaders, city employees and community partners seek in a new city manager.
Where: The fourth-floor city council chambers at Janesville City Hall.
When: Tuesday, Nov. 1. Four sessions throughout the day will allow a specific forum for the following groups:
10 to 11:30 a.m.: Leaders from local business, industry and financial institutions.
1 to 2:30 p.m.: City employees and union representatives.
3 to 4:30 p.m.: Community partners including local governmental bodies, school district officials and private, nonprofit groups.
6 to 8 p.m.: General Public.
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