If the Batavia City Council has a plan to fill the vacancy caused by the departure of former City Manager Martin Moore, it isn’t revealing it – at least not yet.
Acting on the advice of the city attorney, Council President Eugene Jankowski Jr. today sent an email to The Batavian, stating “it’s still very early in the process. (The) Novak (Consulting Firm) is available and is one of the options City Council is exploring.”
Jankowski said the board is “continuing the search process” but would not elaborate due to it being a personnel matter.
While Jankowski believes it is early in the process to find a permanent replacement for Moore, who left Batavia on June 22, another city resident said Council should have disclosed its plan by now.
John Roach, speaking during the public comments segment of Monday night’s City Council meeting, said council members knew that Moore was on his way out.
“You still haven’t decided what you are going to do about replacing him, and that seems kind of silly,” he said. “Once he said he was leaving, you should have had a meeting and said, ‘OK, let’s get a plan.’ You talk about having a plan and you talk about looking at a plan.”
Roach said he is in favor of hiring of Acting City Manager Rachael Tabelski, who was brought on last August as the assistant city manager.
“Obviously, the person has been around awhile … you think you’re going to find somebody better?” he asked. “Save a little money -- save a little time -- make a decision. It’s kind of embarrassing that it has been months (actually nearly two months), and you haven’t even decided what the plan is.”
Sammy DiSalvo, a Democratic Party candidate for a City Council at-large seat in 2020, followed Roach to the podium but had a different viewpoint.
“I support holding a full search for a new city manager,” DiSalvo said. “Nepotism is not a way to run a city.”
The Batavian has asked Jankowski on separate occasions if a full search will be conducted, and if so, will Council be contracting with the Novak group out of Cincinnati, Ohio, again to conduct the search.
Novak coordinated the search that brought Moore from Eunice, N.M., to Batavia in August of 2018, and reportedly gave the city a guarantee that the next search would be at no charge if Moore left before completing two full years as city manager.
In a related development, the Valencia County News-Bulletin, a weekly newspaper in New Mexico, reported that Moore is one of 13 candidates for the city manager job in Belen, a city of about 7,400 people about 35 miles south of Albuquerque.
