Aldermen tonight will vote on a staff recommendation to hire GovHR USA to recruit a new city manager for Evanston.
Northbrook-based GovHR includes three former Evanston department heads on its staff — Joellen (Earl) Cademartori, Richard Eddington and Grant Farrar.
It has conducted several recent department head searches for the city, including ones that led to the hiring of Police Chief Demitrous Cook, Parks Recreation and Community Services Director Lawrence Hemingway and former Community Development Director Mark Muenzer.
In a memo to aldermen, outgoing City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz and Human Resources Division Mansger Jennifer Lin say GovHR’s proposed fee for the project of $23,500 was second lowest among the seven firms that offered proposals from among the 20 contacted by the city.
The least-expensive proposal — at $17,500 — came from the Prothman Company based in Issaquah, Washington — which, coincidentally, is the town Bobkiewicz is heading to become its city administrator.
The staff memo says Prothman has done most of its recent placements in Washington and Oregon, while saying GovHR “has a niche in executive searches in Illinois” with local recruiters who have extensive experience in local government here and who are familiar with local expectations for city adminstrators.
The aldermen tonight are also scheduled to approve a contract with Assistant City Manager Erike Storlie that names her interim city manager for a period of up to a year before a new city manager is named. The agreement will give her a 15% increase over her current salary of $168,000 for the temporary duty assignment and pledges to return her to the role of assistant city manager or another senior management level position after that.