Centralia Mayor Bryan Kuder says the city council was fully aware of new City Manager Scott Randall’s past work and legal history when he was hired.
Kuder says he has been contacted after that information was sent to some in the community.
“We had a formal background investigation conducted on him and also on top of that his interview took almost three and a half hours. He was very forthcoming on where he worked, why he left, etc. He was very forthcoming about the lawsuits involved in his career. He absolutely didn’t hide anything. It was substantiated when we did the background investigation. In speaking with all the council members, we were very pleased with his forthcomingness. There was nothing we saw that would prohibit him from being hired as the city manager of Centralia. We are the ones that picked him and we give him our full vote of confidence in the job that he can do.”
Kuder says he learned when going through the 20 resumes for the job that experienced city managers do a lot of job changing. But Kuder says that is part of the profession due to the manager’s being hired by elected Mayors and City Councils that change every two or four years.
Kuder says there were several local candidates that were scored on the same scale as those applying from around the country.
“There was a scoring template. On that template, there were ten criteria. A lot of them had to do with current city manager duties such as TIF, Enterprise Zones, Grant Writing, and stuff like that. Some of the local candidates, although they were strong in managerial and strong points in some criteria, they were missing some of the key points that we were looking for in the city manager day to day operations. That’s why we eventually ended up with Scott because he met all ten criteria that we were looking.”
Randall was unanimously hired by the Centralia City Council at a special meeting on Tuesday and began work on Wednesday. He last worked as General Manager of a large homeowners association in Palm Springs, California. Randall has spent about 20 of his 40-year career as a city manager or assistant city manager in Illinois communities.
