Just cut to the chase already

This newspaper's Friday headline “Manager Search Plods Along” may have said it all about the lack of progress the mayor and city council are making in naming a permanent city manager. For at least two meetings they have been debating how many people (not necessarily who) should be appointed to a search committee that will narrow the field of applicants to the handful from which they'll choose.

This endless soap opera of indecision is almost reminiscent of the arguments during the Paris Peace Talks three decades ago over the shape of the negotiating table. While it may have once been joked that the current mayor and council couldn't agree on what to put on a pizza for dinner, it now seems clear that they can't even decide what to have for dinner, and in at least one or two cases, if they are even hungry.

While councilor Matthew Smith came up with information for a job ad (and apparently resumes are coming in) and councilor William Graney has a list of a handful of community leaders (and one has to ask if they are just window dressing, despite possibly being told they are not) to sit on a search committee, little more has been done publicly to move this process along.