Interviews for city manager set this week

A relatively light Thursday morning meeting agenda for Carson City’s Board of Supervisors will clear the decks for a more intensive afternoon and Friday with city manager candidates.

That’s not to say the meeting agenda has no significance and all the important work will come afterward, when the mayor and supervisors meet with the candidates informally in the afternoon and for formal interviews the next day. First the board will finalize work on the capital projects’ city sales-tax hike. Though a 4-1 vote is a foregone conclusion to adopt the one-eighth-of-one-cent boost, it is the final step on a lengthy and controversial road.

Adoption of the ordinance on second reading will provide nearly $1 million annually to underpin bonds for several projects. They include a multipurpose athletic center, an animal shelter, work on the Community Center to enhance Bob Boldrick Theater use, as well as downtown and outlying business street-scape changes. Those will be on Carson Street downtown, north and south, as well as along East William Street.

The tax hike will cost consumers $12.50 more for each $10,000 in taxable goods purchased in the city. Proponents have said 40 percent of the burden will be handled by visitors, but opponents objected and questioned the need for some or all of the projects.

The Thursday meeting starts, as usual, at 8:30 a.m. in the Community Center’s Sierra Room. After it ends, possibly at mid-morning or midday, the mayor and four supervisors will get one-on-one time with each city manager candidate on a rotating basis. Each session is expected to last about 15 minutes for informal conversation and questions to be exchanged.

Friday’s public meeting starts at 8:30 a.m. in the Sierra Room for formal interviews, with the board using pre-determined questions. The candidates are Jeffrey Fontaine, Stacey Giomi, Timothy Hacker, Nicholas Marano and James Nichols. That is an alphabetical listing; the order for interviewing wasn’t supplied on the Friday agenda.

Fontaine and Giomi are local. The former is with the Nevada Association of Counties; the latter is the city’s fire chief. Hacker formerly was city manager of North Las Vegas. Marano, a former Marine Corps colonel who headed Camp Pendleton, now is a consultant. Nichols has been assistant or deputy city manager in Midland, Texas, and before that in Las Vegas.

After the interviews, the board late Friday is scheduled to name a city manager-designate pending negotiations, plus a backup in case such talks don’t work out. Pay range for the new city chief executive is expected to be between $140,000 and $180,000 annually.