The Centralia City Council has named Assistant City Manager Derek Sherman as Administrative Officer to perform duties of City Manager beginning Wednesday.
The action came as Interim City Manager Forrest Langenfeld thanked the city council and city staff for their hard work and dedication before he exits the position at the end of the day on Tuesday.
“This has been a real pleasure. To me, this wasn’t something I was looking for whenever the phone calls started coming. You can’t tell your hometown no. Especially when you know there are extremely hard-working people trying to get things done and if I have been able to do one thing to help them then this has been worth my time.”
Langenfeld said he also appreciated the city’s interaction with the Centralia Chamber of Commerce.
Sherman says he is looking forward to the challenge.
“It is in my job description to act as City Manager if City Manager is gone. It was nice to have Forrest here he was a great big help. I’m glad we are able to access him easy and is just a phone call away.”
Mayor Bryan Kuder says they continue to narrow the field for the next city manager.
“We are currently at the top two so in the closed session we will probably discuss that and hopefully real soon we will come down to the final person that we will offer the position to. From there it goes into negotiating the contract and background. What we are looking for is we want the individual we choose not only to be a well-rounded applicant, we just want that person and their whole family to be a good fit for Centralia too.”
The council started with 18 candidates for the city manager and earlier narrowed the field to five.
