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North Branch Council met in a work session format last week with tables pulled together and everybody seated facing each other,  accompanied by elections clerk Ragini Varma and interim city administrator Jason Ziemer.

Discussion on how best to move ahead on a search for a permanent full time administrator took the majority of the two-hour meeting.

Council member Kelly Neider suggested bringing in a facilitator from League of MN Cities to discuss the job itself to better define what basic qualities the council wants.  North Branch seeks  a successor to Renae Fry, whose separation agreement  was effective the middle of last month. (The Press has a request for the document accepted by the city six weeks ago, which has not yet been fulfilled.)

Council member Neider feels the hiring of a search firm must wait until the council gets a chance to take a look at alternative positions to an administrator, and if the decision is that the city needs an administrator council should have a firm handle on attributes and what is required under the job description.  She especially questioned the structure of Human Resources responsibilities.  

Council agreed this hire calls for council to advance cooperatively towards identified shared goals— whatever they are.  The LMC assistance will be finalized by the mayor. This is free of charge, as a service provided for the annual membership in the group. 

Interim Administrator Ziemer will also contact the search firms for proposals and dates for when they can be interviewed by the council.  In the meantime the league will facilitate a roundtable with council on the administrator structure.  No date was given to bring the process into a  further work session.

Ziemer worked as North Branch community development director and when Fry left, he was given a pay raise and agreed to take on various mandatory administrative functions. Mayor Schieber and Council member Canada are personnel liaisons as well.

In another matter, Council member Peter Schaps put primary elections on the agenda.  Schaps said the city at one time held primaries to narrow fields of candidates and he would like to see the practice return. (Press research would date the last primary in August 2012, when Ron Lindquist and Kirsten Kennedy were primary winners out of a field of three. ( County commissioner and state and federal elections are not city-run.)

Council members were ambivalent about re-activating a primary ballot system.  

The mayor commented that primary ballots usually rely on there being political parties involved and city elections are supposed to be non-partisan.  Neider responded, “We can call it non partisan all day...”  but everybody comes into an office with a background of  political beliefs that affect their actions, she concluded.

Travis Miles and Robert Canada commented they are “on the fence” as far as any benefits from running a primary.  They did not support budgeting extra expenditures for it.

The elections clerk said there must be a decision by April if there’s going to be primary balloting, etc.

Council asked for more detail on when primary elections would be required and if they are just in even-numbered general election cycles or every election.  There will be more discussion at a later date.

At the outset of the work session: council heard from a citizen who said he’d applied three times for the economic development authority (committee) and had been ignored or told there were no openings.  He spoke at length about his personal corporate work history and his ideas for improving the city’s long range plan and developing strategy on building the local economy.

Council is pictured above with concerned citizen seated to left, hands clasped.

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