The agenda for the October 24 Executive Director Selection Committee discloses all one needs to know about the approach being taken by the Committee. The only items on the agenda are the roll call, a mandatory opportunity for public comment, a closed session and a report-out. All the signs are there that a back-room deal is being cut for the most important hire for the future of the Bay Area. This is just the way it was done when Steve Heminger was appointed many years ago. A hire from the inside, with no national search process is what happened then and now seems to be the plan for now.
If a structured public discussion had been agendized, that would had suggested the possibility that Committee members saw this hire as something more than a mere political plum. Another two decades of more status quo thinking now seems imminent…
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