To the Editor:

Hopefully some citizens are watching what is going on with the hiring of the Search Firm that is going to be searching for the next City Manager for the City of Burien(COB). While the wise thing to do would be to wait to hire this firm until the new Council is elected and on board, there are some Council members who want to do this now because those members may end up losing in this next election. So it appears their plan is to hamstring the new Council with a firm now that will select candidates that were as bad as Mike Martin was or to hire one of their old friend search firms before they leave office. As we all know, Mr. Martin was hired because a friend of Mr. Shaw’s had worked with Mr. Martin in Kent and knew he was having difficulties getting hired. So it was arranged to have a Search Firm bring Mr. Martin to Burien. The rest is history.

There are three Search Firms in the running to be hired in Burien, they are Prothman, SGR and Waters. They presented at this last Council meeting, Monday night. Greg Prothman was clearly unprepared to present to the Council. He didn’t know the most basic details about Burien and couldn’t answer the most basic questions about the quality of services he was going to provide, if hired. However, he has old time friends in Burien City Hall, has worked with, hired some of the staff in City Hall.

The Search Firm named Waters was by far the best presenter of the group of three firms but because the man came from Texas, Joan McGilton tried to intimidate the presenter. As usual, she said inappropriate comments to the presenter, talked on way too long and acted in her usual rude manner that we all have seen many times at Council meetings. At one point she implied that because the man came from Texas, he couldn’t be considered progressive enough to work for her or the City of Burien. Every citizen in Burien should be embarrassed for how she treated this presenter at a Council meeting. At the two previous Council meeting before this one, she was so disoriented that she could not even follow the topics being discussed and begged other Council members, in public, to tell her how to vote. Hopefully voters will notice these ongoing poor behaviors on her part and not re-elect her.

However, the real issue of this letter is; whether the current Council will have the wisdom to leave this hiring to the next Council or the wisdom to hire the best qualified firm for the job. It’s time that the Council considers the best future for Burien rather than just hiring just another old buddy again for the job.

R. Delorm