Cool heads and wise choices called for in manager search

Jeff Towery’s decision to leave McMinnville after putting in a bit over eight years as city manager here, presents the community with both a challenge and an opportunity.

We hope local leaders will focus on the latter in choosing interim and permanent replacements over the coming months. We have several major ventures coming to crucial junctures, and seeing them through will require not only thoughtful judgment and skillful direction, but also a positive, can-do, consensus-building attitude.

Except for the brief tenure of Towery’s immediate predecessor, retired Air Force general Martha Meeker, McMinnville had only had two previous managers. And those two, Joe Dancer and Kent Taylor, achieved such exalted status they each have prominent local landmarks named after them.

Towery’s poise, confidence and resume made him the obvious choice among the four finalists who emerged for the post at the time.

In contrast to Meeker, he boasted a distinguished record of local government management experience, marked by successful tours of service with Coos Bay, Cottage Grove, Lane County and Springfield. He seemed best-suited to getting things back on track.

At the time, homelessness was just reaching crisis proportions and a global pandemic would soon follow. The community was beginning to grapple with redevelopment of the Granary and Alpine districts, development of the Three Mile Lane corridor, replacement of aging recreational facilities, revitalization of downtown infrastructure, and creation of a new fire district to put local ambulance and firefighting functions on a sounder footing.

To varying degrees, progress was made in all of those areas under his watch. However, much remains unfinished, and the future of this community depends in large measure on how well we manage the follow-through under new leadership.

Something of a re-set was already in the offing prior to Towery’s announcement. After all, we recently elected a new mayor, swore in three new councilors, welcomed new police and fire chiefs, and replaced our parks and finance directors. Viewed through that lens, this may be a good time to introduce a new top gun at city hall.

We can only hope to see the council come together, and bring the larger community together, on a way forward with some semblance of a consensus choice.

There are, clearly, divisions evident in both council and community ranks. Some feel the city needs to move faster, others slower; some feel it needs to deliver more, others less.

To the maximum extent possible, we would like to see those divisions soothed rather than further inflamed. To our way of thinking, the old truism, “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” got it right.