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The Babbitt city council narrowed the pool of applicants for the city’s unfilled clerk-treasurer position to 10 during a Tuesday study session. These candidates will be notified shortly and progress to a first round of interviews within a week.
The 10 applicants selected for interviews are Michael Fairchild, Nancy Sanford, Alyssa Becker, Debora Starkman, Ehneetin Brarqwel, Anthony Paleri, Tanner Spawn, Erik Holmstrom, David Beauclair, and Michael Schultz.
The council received over 20 applications for the position, which were due last Friday, May 30.
Deputy clerk-treasurer Sara Powell highlighted the strength of the applicant pool and urged councilors to look beyond the minimum qualifications and prioritize candidates who demonstrate a wide variety of preferred skills, a depth of experience, and a strong “educational background.”
“With this amount of applicants, I just wanted to ask you guys to focus on the preferred qualifications, because we have so many applicants that have those,” Powell said.
During the discussions, several key preferences emerged. The strongest candidates demonstrate a mix of qualities, including leadership and clerk-treasurer experience, a background in successful business management, demonstration of consistent employment, bookkeeping and accounting skills and more.
“I think we have an opportunity here,” council member Duane Lossing said. “I really like a couple of these candidates that show strong leadership in business backgrounds, you know, who started businesses.”
He mentioned the importance of accounting and the ability to “do the books,” but emphasized above all that this is a chance for the council to fill a “void” and hire someone who may have skills or experience “that our community kind of lacks in.”
“Our accounting software does magic,” Powell added, “So with the right tools, the bookkeeping part of it is not the big (thing).”
Deliberations ensued on the hiring process, with the council coalescing around a timeline that includes a first round of interviews, followed by reference-checking, and finally a second round of interviews — ideally with the applicant pool narrowed to five by that time.
Council member Jim Lassi stressed the importance of these interviews to reveal the “intangibles,” such as personality. Powell, who has gone through “three clerks now,” agreed.
“I think it’s important to get people in front of us,” Powell said, “The job description tells you a lot of things, but I know firsthand what it actually looks like in the office.”
