‘Confidential recruitment’: Barstow paid corporate consultant, agreed to high-dollar hire in secret search for top official
Barstow’s top decision-makers paid a private consulting firm in a closed-door effort to decide who they should hire for the city’s top unelected seat.
Now, an elected City Council often hampered by political squabbles is moving in lockstep on an upcoming vote to confirm a candidate who — after at least five months of confidential meetings — has been all but preordained without public knowledge.
Willie A. Hopkins Jr.’s name had never been mentioned publicly in relation to a job-opening as Barstow’s first “City Administrator” until the evening of Sept. 9, when the city’s attorney, Matthew Summers, spoke in a near-empty council chamber.
There, at a special meeting added to the City Council’s calendar a couple days in advance, Summers provided what appears to be the first of any public disclosures of decisions made as a result of Barstow’s search for a replacement to former City Manager Nikki Salas, which began more than eight months ago.
Summers revealed that a consensus had been reached: Hopkins was the man.
In fact, he continued, the terms of Hopkins’ future deal had already been negotiated: A three-year contract with notably higher pay than that of his would-be predecessor.
According to the most-recent data from Transparent California, Salas received about $142,000 of base pay and $209,000 of total pay and benefits as city manager in 2019. The terms proposed for Hopkins include:
- A $220,000 annual salary (with 2% to be paid into a CalPERS retirement plan)
- A $500 per-month car allowance
- A $5,000 payment if Hopkins moves his primary residence to Barstow
- In each fiscal year, 200 hours of vacation leave, 96 hours of sick leave, and 80 hours of executive leave
- Medical, dental and vision benefits, as is standard in the city’s management employees union
- A $100,000 “life insurance and accidental death coverage” plan.
Hopkins’ proposed contract would also make him “eligible for consideration of a salary increase” at least once a year. The decision to raise his salary, and by how much, would be at “the sole discretion of the City Council.”
The City Council will cast a second vote in a public meeting starting at 6 p.m. Monday. If passed, Hopkins’ contract will be solidified. Prior to that vote, members of the public will get their first chance to speak on the potential hire, but that may just be a formality.
“His first day of being employed by the City of Barstow will be on the 21st (of September),” Mayor Paul Courtney told the Daily Press, “and his first day in the City of Barstow will be on the 27th.”
‘This is a confidential recruitment’
Hopkins’ resume includes 11 years as a U.S. Army-commissioned officer, management gigs at multinational supply-chain companies, and local government roles in Florida, Georgia and California’s Bay Area, according to his LinkedIn profile and a 2015 Alameda County bio.
He most recently served as director of Alameda County’s General Services Agency.
The GSA for that county, which is located in the Bay Area, did not respond to a request for an interview with Hopkins, who could not otherwise be reached for comment.
The agency’s primary charge is handling Alameda County’s contracting work — when it pays outside entities to provide goods or services for a range of dollar values. Those duties include opening and accepting bids for new contracts.
Meanwhile, Barstow officials did not land on Hopkins for the city administrator role alone.
Ralph Andersen & Associates is an executive-level recruiting and consulting firm based in Rocklin, a “partner community” of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council that lies roughly two dozen miles north of Sacramento.
The firm, led by CEO Heather Renschler, “works directly with city managers, city councils, board of directors, and other governing boards during the recruitment and selection process,” according to its website, “dealing directly with the client on all aspects of the search process.”
Renschler’s “widespread network of contacts and potential candidates extends throughout the nation” and “internationally in the transportation and aviation sectors,” her website bio states.
The firm’s searches for public and private leaders, it adds, include “many of a sensitive and critical nature.”
In Barstow, Andersen & Associates “conducted the City Administrator search,” City Clerk Services Manager Christina Rudsell confirmed to the Daily Press.
Yet, city management and staff have not responded to a follow-up request sent last Tuesday for a copy of the city’s contract with Andersen & Associates, or for clarification on whether the contract was included on the agenda for any public meetings of the City Council.
Andersen & Associates did not respond to a request for comment.
The Daily Press has not been able to locate any agendas or minutes for a past City Council meeting that mention the contract with Andersen & Associates, or any other items relaying the city’s progress in its city administrator search prior to Sept. 9.
In separate interviews, Mayor Courtney and Councilman Tim Silva previously referenced but did not name Andersen & Associates as being part of the City Council’s closed sessions — where talks are barred from public record or participation — on the city administrator search.
Silva said on Aug. 30 that there have been “several” closed-session, or confidential, meetings in the process of landing on Hopkins for the job. Before the search became active in closed session, he said, “we adopted a procedure and then we hired a firm.”
At the time, Silva had said “you’re going to see maybe a couple more” closed session items on the topic “before it is actually something to report, which is, ‘We’ve hired a city administrator.’”
Yet, the next time the City Council met was Sept. 9, when it rolled out Hopkins’ name and quickly appointed him.
Courtney told the Daily Press that 41 people applied for the job. Andersen & Associates, “did all the recruitments, the vetting and everything, and they narrowed it down to the top eight,” he said.
The City Council then interviewed those eight candidates, he said, and formed a “citizens group” made up of five individuals, with each City Council member selecting one. The citizens group interviewed the eight candidates separately, he said.
The City Council and the citizens group then ranked each candidate, Courtney said, adding that both groups had Hopkins as their No. 1 pick. A group of city staff members then interviewed the top two candidates, the mayor said. That group also placed Hopkins atop their list.
“Then, myself and Mayor Pro Tem James Noble, we negotiated his contract, and that’s what we brought to the Council — the entire Council — in the special meeting, was the contents of the contract,” Courtney said, referring to the Sept. 9 closed session. “And then we came to a consensus with the contract, and that’s what we reported out. That was the first time his name was disclosed.”
A job posting for the city administrator job in Barstow, which is now closed, can still be found in a long list of “career opportunities” on Andersen & Associates’ website. An eight-page recruitment brochure was uploaded to the page on May 19, 2021, the website’s metadata shows.
The deadline to apply to be Barstow’s city administrator was June 28, according to the brochure, which is polished in its design and details. Candidates were asked to contact Andersen & Associates’ representatives with their application or for any “confidential inquiries.”
“This is a confidential recruitment and will be handled accordingly throughout the various stages of the process,” it states. “Candidates should be aware that references will not be contacted until mutual interest has been established.”
“Barstow operates under the council-city administrator form of government,” the brochure states. “This change in governance was recently made by the newly elected City Council.”
‘I recognize there’s not a lot of detail’
The city administrator position Hopkins is on track to fill in Barstow did not exist until this year.
The Barstow City Council began working to create it as a replacement for the traditional city manager job — one with less autonomy from that of the elected council — at a meeting on Jan. 19, a few days after Salas was placed on paid leave.
The City Council created the city administrator role by confirming a resolution to Barstow’s municipal code in two meetings – a 3-2 vote on March 15 and a 4-1 vote on April 5.
Councilman Tim Silva cast a dissenting vote against the creation of the position on both occasions. He was joined in the first vote with a second dissenting vote by then-Councilman Noble, who has since taken over as mayor pro tem for Councilwoman Barbara Rose.
At the April 5 meeting, the City Council also held the first of more than a half-dozen meetings that would appear on future meeting agendas in closed session. The purpose of each session would be described in public agendas only as, “Public Employee Appointment (Gov. Code Section 54957)” and “Title: City Manager.”
(The title was switched to “City Administrator” on closed-session agendas in recent months.)
Save the last of these closed sessions, the city’s meeting minutes show a city attorney stating, “No reportable action was taken.”
The special meeting on Sept. 9 marked the last of the meetings.
The agenda included a public item to follow the closed session: City staffers were recommending the City Council appoint someone as city administrator, and the city’s budget “contains sufficient payroll appropriations to cover the salary.”
The special meeting ran for about one hour: More than 45 minutes in closed session and 15 minutes in open session, which was mostly made up of public comments from Mike Hernandez, husband of former Barstow Mayor Pro Tem Carmen Hernandez, and menial procedures, like motions.
Courtney knocked out standard procedures like a roll-call to start the meeting. Then, just a few minutes in, the dais moved to closed-session for about 45 minutes of confidential talks.
After the dais returned to public session, the meeting went quickly. Summers, the city attorney, spoke with little fanfare for less than two minutes, announcing Hopkins’ name for the first time, followed by the terms of the city’s negotiated contract with Hopkins.
“The plan will be tonight, the appointment, followed by Sept. 20, the next regular council meeting will be formal approval of the appointment,” Summers said. “The staff report with a little more detail — I recognize there’s not a lot of detail right now. The detail will come on Sept. 20, when he will be — the appointment (will be) confirmed.”
Summers did not mention Andersen & Associates at the Sept. 9 special meeting or the process through which the city chose Hopkins and negotiated his contract.
Less than one minute after Summers spoke, the City Council voted unanimously to approve Hopkins’ appointment. Mayor Courtney adjourned the special meeting at 7:02 p.m.
At the meeting on Monday, the final vote will be open to the public, both at City Hall and online via a livestream on the city’s website.
A public-comment period will be held before the City Council votes on Hopkins’ appointment, though only people who attend physically at City Hall are allowed to request a spot on the list of public commenters. Attendants must notify city personnel they would like to speak prior to the 6 p.m. start time.
Charlie McGee covers the city of Barstow and its surrounding communities for the Daily Press. He is also a Report for America corps member with the GroundTruth Project, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to supporting the next generation of journalists in the U.S. and around the world. McGee may be reached at 760-955-5341 or cmcgee@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @bycharliemcgee.