The Bulloch County Board of Commissioners staff is preparing to send out a request for proposals from professional recruiting firms for one to help the commissioners search for a new county manager.
Interim County Manager Cindy Steinmann reported on this, briefly, during open session of the commissioners’ Jan. 7 meeting, the first with a new chairman as well as two new district commissioners all on board.
After Tom Couch, who been Bulloch’s county manager for 20 years, submitted his resignation in mid-October and made it effective Nov. 29, Steinmann, then assistant county manager, agreed to step up as interim manager. She intends to remain in the interim role while assisting with a search for a new county manager and will not apply for the permanent job.
During staff comments time in last week’s meeting, Steinmann noted that she had sent the commissioners an email recommending that they contract with a recruitment firm and asking for commissioners’ feedback.
“As I stated in the email, (recruitment firms) generally have access to a wider talent pool and in-depth knowledge of local government markets,” Steinmann said. “They can help screen applicants to make sure that you’re getting someone with the correct experience. If that is the route that you want to go, we have drafted a document to solicit a request for proposals.”
She would work with the county’s purchasing manager to send the request, or RFP, “to all of our different marketplaces where we solicit all of our bids and requests for services.” One key place the RFP will be posted is GLGA, the Georgia Local Government Access Marketplace, she said in a follow-up call later in the week. The GLGA Marketplace is an online service jointly maintained by the Georgia Municipal Association and Association County Commissioners of Georgia for city and county job and service contract listings.
The RFP will probably be sent out in mid-January – in other words, next week – and remain open about 30 days, till mid-February, she said.
“Recruitment firms would submit their proposals to us and then you all would look at those proposals and decide on which firm you want to go with,” Steinmann told commissioners, and asked if that was how they wanted to move forward.
She said they didn’t need to vote but could tell her informally as “a general understanding” to send out the request for proposals.
“Just soliciting the RFP doesn’t lock you into anything,” she told the elected board. “If anything, it buys you a little bit of time while we’re getting those submissions. So don’t think it will hurt to put it out, and it kind of gets you a step ahead of the game even if you change your mind on how you want to go about the recruitment.”
Bulldogs analogy
New Chairman David Bennett, presiding at his first Board of Commissioners meeting, and Commissioner Anthony Simmons, the longest-serving member, both spoke in support of this step. Bennett said he is “very much an advocate” for working with a professional search firm.
“As I’ve talked to folks in the public about this, I’ve said that I look at this as like recruiting a quarterback for the Georgia Bulldogs,” Bennett said. “We wouldn’t just recruit locally, we’d want to get the best talent that we can, and to do that we would go out and look everywhere we could to get that best talent.
“By soliciting a professional … talent search group, they’re going to help us to do that,” he concluded, and Simmons chimed in, “I agree with that.”
Bennett said he believes the sooner the search can begin, the better, and added that he thinks Steinmann will have “an expiration date” in how long she wants to serve as interim manager. She signed a contract with commissioners for the interim role in early December. It carries a $175,000 annual salary – Couch’s final salary here was $202,546 – but also promises that Steinmann can return to being assistant county manager at her previous salary.
If that didn’t happen and she were dismissed without cause, she would be entitled to three months severance pay at the interim manager salary.
“I recognize that you are doing two people’s jobs right now, and eventually you’re going to get tired of doing that,” Bennett said to Steinmann. “I appreciate what you’re doing right now, but you can’t do this forever. Sooner or later … you’re going to get tired of it. I don’t want to wait till this is a crisis. … So, the sooner we can start on this, the better.”
“I appreciate that,” she replied. “I will get that process started.”
Steinmann, whose two Georgia Southern University degrees are a Bachelor of Business Administration and a Master of Public Administration, joined the county staff as a management analyst in December 2014. She was promoted to special projects manager in 2018 and to assistant county manager in the spring of 2021.