Redding council to open recruitment for a new city manager
The council is contracting Rocklin-based recruiter Ralph Anderson & Associates to run the recruitment. It’s a decision met with mixed opinions by council members, some of whom wanted to offer the role to the city’s interim manager.
The Redding City Council voted in a special meeting yesterday to enter an agreement with a consultant to recruit the next city manager. It’s a plan met with mixed opinions by council members, as some said they feel interim City Manager Michael Webb should be offered the role.
Since the vote was held in closed session, it’s not publicly known how each council member voted, only that a “majority” of the council approved the decision.
Ralph Anderson & Associates will lead recruitment efforts, City Clerk Sharlene Tipton confirmed today. The Rocklin-based recruiter helped place Oakland’s chief of police and Fresno’s city clerk, among other placements, according to its website.
It took approximately three months for the city to recruit late City Manager William Tarbox after former City Manager Barry Tippin retired last October, and Tarbox didn’t start his role until two months after he was selected. If the recruiting, hiring and onboarding process is similar to last time, a new city manager likely won’t start until early 2027.
After Tarbox’s unexpected death in July, Assistant City Manager and Public Works Director Michael Webb was promoted to serve in the city manager role for the interim until the city found a permanent replacement. Since then, he’s retained all three leadership positions.
At least two council members think Webb is a good fit for the permanent city manager role. Redding Mayor Mike Littau told Shasta Scout this morning that time is of the essence, and Webb “looks like the guy of the most knowledge that can do this ‘right now,’ not waiting five to seven months for [a city manager] to get here.”
He explained that he doesn’t want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on recruitment, adding that an external city manager may negotiate a salary that’s higher than the current offer of $295,000.
Council member Jack Munns also told Shasta Scout this morning that he feels Webb is doing well as the interim city manager and believes he’ll be in the running for the permanent position.
The city manager recruitment announcement comes as the city searches for several other top positions, including police chief, fire chief, finance director and city attorney. Even the council could face a major shift after November’s election, as three out of five of its seats are on the ballot. The city is also facing significant financial challenges, and the council may make major changes to city funds and processes in the coming months after feedback from Circle 6 Consulting’s report.
In an email to a reporter today, Council member Paul Dhanuka repeated a statement he made yesterday on Facebook, saying he feels opening the recruitment process will help the city “consider all options, gather diverse perspectives, analyze information thoughtfully, and engage in civil debate.”
“Our city works best when we follow a clear, consistent process rather than relying on personal opinion or preference,” he said.
Council members Tenessa Audette and Erin Resner did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.
Comments (24)
Comments are closed.
Related Articles
Grief as a community bridge during Día de los Muertos event in Siskiyou
Leaders from two grassroots groups, Latino Outdoors and Seeds of Ancestral Renewal, came together last Friday with the help of Siskiyou County Arts Council for the second annual community celebration of Día de los Muertos.
Community members speak out during tense mental health advisory board meeting
Those impacted by the withdrawal of Kings View services shared concerns during a mental health advisory board meeting last week, saying the closure of a local mental health drop-in center had left gaps in care. Board members also navigated a number of other tense moments during the meeting.
Redding high school students call for tobacco ordinance enforcement
Students called on the Redding City Council to follow through on enforcement of a tobacco ordinance passed last year. Doing so, they said, would help address Shasta County’s high rate of teen tobacco use.
“…Since the vote was held in closed session, it’s not publicly known how each council member voted, only that a ‘majority’ of the council approved the decision…”
Lack of transparency -including public accountability- only reaffirms the premise that the City of Redding is a cesspool of corruption.
NEEDED ASAP: The Special Investigations Team (SIT) and White Collar Investigation Teams within the California Department of Justice handle complex public corruption, bribery, and misappropriation of public funds.
Madison (& Annelise) thank you for covering these topics. You’re fulfilling a role no other media in Redding does and that’s good. A suggestion. Government is unique in the way it handles financial reporting. The city manager position is offering $295k salary $50k a year more than Newsoms salary),but the total compensation is much much more. Please consider asking what the total landed cost of the hire will be. How much will taxpayers be spending on this person including all benefits (stipends, allowances, benefits and retirement)?
ReddingSkeptic: Will do.
Skeptic, for real, what’s with this trope of comparing the city manager salary to the governor? I keep seeing it. The governor is an elected official with a salary set by the legislature. There are no real qualifications for the position besides winning an election.
I don’t know if 300k is societally appropriate for the position, but it does seem like the market rate for someone with the experience and expertise. Unless it’s out of step for city managers in similar municipalities. That’s a legitimate question.
The real question is who in their right mind is going to respond to a solicitation for a job with this city right now? Nobody with a solid career and the ability to google “Redding Ca.” Someone who knows from behind closed doors it’s going to be a slash and burn operation that wants to max their PERS maybe.
They brought in Tarbox and his Circle 6 buddies claiming it would save money, and the first thing he did was spend another $100k remodeling his office. Add that to the $300k we spent on a PowerPoint, and it doesn’t look like the current council is actually trying to save money.
Could someone fact check that Tarbox was indeed allowed to spend $100k on remodeling his office? If true, we all need to have a serious conversation with our city council. That kind of expense is 100% antithetical to the “find some ways to cut spending” narrative we’ve been hearing.
Did he really spend 100k remodeling his office?
hmmmm, I think I read the cards here, 2 council members seem to support Mr. Webb, 3 who are dubious and think a white Knight is somewhere out there waiting to add the almost $300k to their income, plus benefits. If Mr. Webb does not turn out to be the one, then surely he would hang in there until a consulting firm would come on board. I see no reason not to award Mr. Webb the job. After getting to know city council candidate Elise Ramirez Sloan(no relation to Dan Sloan) I can be assured she would have a rational and sensible response to this matter.
The City Manager position is the most influential position at the CoR. As such, I fully expect our elected council members to prioritize doing the hard work of find the right person for this position. Yes, whoever they consider should be qualified by experience and knowledge, but beyond that, the council should be looking for someone who has the correct moral and philosophical base from which to lead. I’d like to think the council would choose someone who actually serves the communities interest OVER the interests of the unions, the special interest groups or the political whims of the moment.
In that vein, I’ll be sorely disappointed if any of our council members decides to take the easy path and go with whatever consensus they perceive to be present.
Correct moral and philosophical base as determined by Bethel?
A lot of us are tired of the political whims of certain council members treating Redding like a discardable prop for a hopeful state senate run.
Gavrilo, by moral base I’m referring to the set of ideals we hold as “good”. Don’t steal (honor the idea of personal property), don’t lie (honesty is the foundation of civil life), be empathetic (care enough about those around us to take positive action at personal expense if necessary), it’s that too much to demand of those we hire to lead our community?
Okay, no names, so I hope my comment gets published this time.
.
If you pay attention, you can tell there is a single person posting under different names. I think this is under the hope that they are amplifying their message.
.
They keep doing a certain thing over and over, and it gives them away.
Hi Jolly, Yes of course I am aware. However since our policies don’t require you or others to use real names, this is somewhat inevitable. Many times when you or others make guesses at who the writer is I know with certainty that it’s not the person you’ve named because of information I can see on the back end. As a matter of course, I have been deleting comments guessing at identities.
Fair enough.
.
I guess was just trying to get people to think about a comment before they just accept it. That of course includes my own comments.
So Webb is capable of running multiple departments including that of City Manager while the Council spends big bucks looking for someone to take over one of the departments Webb is currently running. Ummmmmm. Am I missing something?
You said it Tobias, corruption. Hence the plan and outside consult etc. If you want to address the problem, hire someone outside to fix it by xxpunging the “good ole boy” network. To be clear- the people of this city are sick of this bullshit.
A plan to hire an outside consultant to conduct a search for city manager candidates is only “corruption” if you don’t understand the meaning of the word “corruption.” You MAGAs deploy the word like a knee-jerk following being struck by a little rubber mallet just below the patella. Weirdly, you’re blind to actual corruption when it’s occurring at the highest levels of our current national government.
.
Also, Tobias is proposing hiring from the inside, and you seem to agree that a search for outside candidates is a waste of money. But promoting from within without even considering outside candidates is precisely defaulting to the “good ol’ boys network.”
.
Your agitation seems to have confused you.
Wasting more money so they can pick a crony out of a hat. They’re passing over Webb because he is competent and shows a glimmer of independent thought.
You cannot fix a watch with its broken parts. The watch is broken. The watch requires new parts.
“The council is contracting Rocklin-based recruiter Ralph Anderson & Associates to run the recruitment” = A CLEAR EXAMPLE OF WASTEFUL SPENDING + INCOMPETENCE.
Why not giving the opportunity to interim City Manager Michael Webb?
Definitively the City of Redding is a cesspool of corruption.
Ralph Andersen & Associates standard hourly billing rates for executive recruitment and consulting services are $50 to $225 per hour, with specific project fees typically ranging from about $27,000 to over $50,000 depending on the scope.
Past municipal contracts in California -Executive searches- typically range from $27,250 (such as for department-level recruitments) up to $50,850+ for comprehensive top-tier executive/city searches.
The City of Redding will be WASTING at least $50K of taxpayers money; therefore, it is fair to label this public institution a cesspool of corruption.
I’m sure you’ve heard the adage, “You get what you pay for.” It’s generally true.
.
There is no way to judge the worth of the proposed $300k bid relative to other firms’ bids without comparing the respective scopes they submitted, their reputations, and their track records on past contracts. There is no way to judge the cost/benefit ratio of their performance until after they perform.
.
Your math is bad, and your perspective is naive.
You talking about the $300k paid to Circus 6? There was no bid. They rammed it through saying there’s just no time to go through the defined procedure. And was it Munz or Littau that said, “uh, don’t worry, huh huh, it’s not like this is some kind of buddy-buddy thing.”
$300k and all we got was an AI slop PowerPoint and a sales pitch for dashboard software.
There was a bid. It’s called a sole-source bid. There needs to be a good enough rationale for it to be approved by the majority of the Council.
.
The fact that you only saw the PowerPoint presentation does not mean that was the only deliverable. Again, you’re wearing your naivete like a badge of honor.
Why do you guys have to label every political position that you don’t agree with “corruption”? Maybe not hump the same key on the piano over and over and over again. It’s lazy and dumb.
.
Webb is the current interim City Manager. Unlike other candidates, he’s getting the chance to prove himself right now. I agree that if he performs well, he’s likely the best candidate for the position.
.
What if his performance isn’t great? Should City Council start the search for a new City Manager then? That process took three months for Tippin. If we wait three months to see how Webb does and it’s not an inspiring performance, that pushes securing a new City Manager out to six months. The top dog is kind of an important position to be held open indefinitely, don’t you think?