Time for Another County Administrator Search?

The question of how to proceed with another county administrator search – Leelanau County’s fourth this decade – loomed large over an executive board meeting Tuesday morning.

At the meeting, county commissioners took their first steps toward a potential request for proposals (RFP) seeking outside consultants to lead a new administrator search. But even that simple step caused significant debate, with board members questioning whether the county could handle the search process in house – and with some public commenters even asking whether a search is necessary at all.

Leelanau County has conducted three separate administrator searches since longtime county administrator Chet Janik announced his retirement earlier this decade. The first resulted in the hire of Deb Allen to succeed Janik starting in December 2022. The second, launched in spring 2024, sought to reframe the job as a joint administrator/chief financial officer position. That search made it all the way past finalist interviews before the Board of Commissioners aborted it, opting instead to extend the contract of then-interim administrator Richard Lewis.

The third search started in August 2024 and scrapped the CFO component. That process ultimately resulted in the hire of Jim Dyer.

Following Dyer’s $70,000 exit earlier this summer, the county is ready for yet another administrator search. Board Chair Steve Yoder sought commissioner approval Tuesday to have the county’s legal department prepare an RFP to find a consultant to lead the way.

“If we go through that process, that’d be something that I would hopefully have back to the board here in October,” Yoder said of the RFP. “I will warn the board that if we go out with an RFP to hire a consultant, those prices are not cheap. Those are going to come back likely in the $30,000 range, if not more.”

Some commissioners bristled at the price tag. District 5 representative Alan Campbell suggested the county handle the hiring process themselves.

“To me, you put out an RFP in our normal way, you get in the applications, maybe you have our attorney keep track of applications,” Campbell said, adding that he didn’t see evidence from past searches that bringing in a consultant “produced a higher level of candidates than the traditional method, which is job applications.”

Vice Chair Mark Walter concurred with Campbell, and suggested that past administrator searches were recent enough that the county could even reach out to previous candidates to bolster its applicant pool.

“We’re still on their radar,” Walter said of those one-time applicants.

Other commissioners warned of the potential pitfalls an in-house hiring process.

 “There are all sorts of reasons why we have to be very careful about doing it ourselves,” said District 4’s Ty Wessell, who served as board chair during the county’s three most recent administrator searches. “None of us should be talking to any prospective candidates in advance of an interview. That’s one of the reasons you have a search person, so they’re reaching out and having those conversations. If we start – or staff starts – getting in the middle of that, we’re going to have some problems.”

District 6 commissioner Gwenne Allgaier, who also served on the board during the last three administrator searches, agreed with Wessell. She noted the scope of the work involved in recruiting candidates, sifting through applications, scheduling interviews, and liaising with candidates, and questioned who would take on those responsibilities in lieu of a consultant.

 “There’s a lot of work to do,” she said. “We sure can’t ask [interim administrator] Lauren [Cypher] to do it, because she’ll probably be one of the applicants.”

What commissioners did not discuss Tuesday was the option of skipping the search entirely and giving the job to Cypher, a possibility suggested earlier in the meeting by a Leelanau resident.

During public comment, Solon Township’s Steve Tostige praised Cypher for “doing the job successfully” and “moving the county forward” through transparency and good rapport with elected officials and staff. Tostige proposed promoting Cypher to permanent administrator as a way to save the county “months of search time and search firm cost” and to “add staff consistency and avoid the risk of starting over with someone who looks good on paper, but has no history with Leelanau County in this role.”

Board members ultimately agreed to let Yoder work with legal to produce an RFP for a search consultant. While the board will likely review that RFP at their October meetings, Yoder warned it would likely be “the first of the year” before the board would be reviewing proposals and setting up interviews with consultants. Actual administrator interviews, he said, might not happen until early next summer.

“This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, going to be a quick process that we go through,” Yoder said.