The Eugene City Council hires and directly supervises the City Manager and the Police Auditor. Last year, under the direction of former Eugene City Council President Chris Pryor, the ECC hired a new City Manager. This year, under the direction of current Eugene City Council President Alan Zelenka, the ECC is hiring a new Police Auditor. There are two very interesting differences between the city manager search supervised by Councilor Pryor and the police auditor search supervised by Councilor Zelenka.
Difference 1: Last year, the public was intentionally informed of the names of three of the three finalists for the job. In the January 17, 2008 Eugene Weekly, Alan Pittman wrote:
"The Eugene City Council has narrowed its choice down for the powerful city manager job to three candidates. Daniel Hobbs reportedly left city manager positions in Fresno and Tracy, Calif., under pressure. Joseph Lessard has worked as a consultant with an interest in progressive planning since leaving an assistant manager job with the city of Austin, Texas a decade ago after some criticism. Jon Ruiz, a retired Army colonel, works as the assistant city manager of Fresno on controlling sprawl but was criticized for being too cozy with developers. The city of Eugene plans to bring the finalists to Eugene for interviews with city executives, chosen citizens and the City Council on Feb. 2."
This year, the public was unintentionally informed of the name of one of the four finalists and unintentionally informed of the current residences of the other three. Newbie Councilor George Brown screwed up at a public meeting and leaked the information that two of the three out of town candidates were from Washington and one was from California.
The way we know that Interim Police Auditor Dawn Reynolds is a candidate is from a letter to the editor in the February 19, 2009 Eugene Register Guard by a dumber-than-a-county-commissioner (a notch down from being dumber-than-a-fencepost) cheerleader for Ms. Reynolds named Paul Prensky.
The aptly initialed peepee writes:
“The Eugene City Council has narrowed the list of candidates for the office of police auditor. Three are from out of the area, so I won’t comment on them. The fourth, Dawn Reynolds, is the current (interim) police auditor. Due to my interest in finding a path to peace between the community at large and the Eugene Police Department, I have followed her tenure carefully so I can speak from experience. I think we already have the best choice.”
So difference number one between Pryor and Zelenka is that Pryor’s search was open and Zelenka’s search is ineffectually closeted. I guess that makes sense.
Difference 2: In the case of Pryor’s supervision of a search for a permanent replacement for former Eugene City Manager Dennis “the menace” Taylor, Interim City Manager Angel Jones, an African-American and longtime city of Eugene employee was not a finalist. Chris Pryor and the other seven city council members decided that the finalist pool should be 100% white males from out of town. Even though:
a. Ms. Jones would have offered geographical, gender and racial diversity to the finalist pool and
b.would have cost nothing to interview
she was not extended the respect and courtesy of being in the finalist pool with the militaristic moron who was third in command in Fresno (and whose appearance and intelligence are remarkably similar to the real Dennis the Menace!) and the other two out-of-state white males.
This year, Interim Auditor Reynolds, who has worked for the city for about a year and whose credentials are “was hand-chosen by inaugural Police Auditor Cris Beamud” is the ONLY finalist from Oregon. Wow. No one from Oregon who applied is qualified to be Eugene's Police Auditor, except Ms. Reynolds.
So difference number two between Pryor and Zelenka is that Pryor’s search was horrendously sexist and disrespectful to Oregonians and Zelenka’s search is merely disrespectful to Oregonians. I guess that makes sense too.
