Letter to the Editor – Yountville Town Council could rebuild community trust with the town manager search

Dear Editor,

Here’s an immediately actionable way for the Yountville Town Council to take a meaningful step to toward rebuilding trust, strengthening collaboration and restoring confidence in town leadership and governance.

As in cities such as Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Hayward, Suisun City, Turlock, and Pacifica, the Council could convene a small community panel to participate – with the selected recruitment firm – in the Town Manager hiring process.

Stakeholder interview panels are a well-established practice in government and business. For Yountville, it would bring community perspectives and needs, local knowledge, and professional experience to inform the selection process – without shifting final decision-making authority away from Council.

Most importantly, this would be a meaningful way to engage the community at a time when visible, concrete action on the part of Council to rebuild trust is sorelyneeded.

Here’s how it could work:

First, the recruitment firm needs to demonstrate knowledge of the community divisiveness facing us and would need to commit to this public process of meaningfulcommunity involvement as a requireddeliverable. By meaningful, I mean one or two community meetings and/or short surveys won’t suffice to rebuild community and confidence in town governance – and a sense of commitment and support for the town manager finalist.

Then, a coordinated outreach campaign would be distributed community-wide to solicit volunteer panelists. The panelists should represent residents, renters, homeowners, Veterans Home residents, businesses, and community organizations.

To reflect a cross-section of the community, panel members would be selected through a transparent, publicly conducted lottery process designed to ensure fairness, broad representation, and public trust.

Once formed, the panel would participate in an orientation to the responsibilities of the Town Manager; the leadership competencies needed and to be evaluated. Administrative Services Director Celia King and Attorney Gary Bell could help ensure the process – and interviews – are lawful, fair, and professionally conducted.

Panelists would be required to sign a confidentiality agreement to protect the current employment status of candidates.

In coordination with the recruitment firm, panelists would conduct interviews and assess candidates around agreed-upon criteria.

The panel would then present its documented findings to the Council. From there, Council would continue the process and conduct final interviews, retaining full authority over the ultimate hiring decision.

What could this accomplish? A well-designed community panel could:

• increase transparency in both the hiring process and our town leadership;
• it would demonstrate a concrete willingness on the part of the Council to rebuild trust and collaboration at an important moment for our town and;
• reinforce that the Town Manager serves the broader community in partnership with Council.

Given what’s transpired over the past two years and especially in recent months, going too fast and limiting community input seems to be in part what has led to where we are now.

While perhaps new to Yountville, stakeholder interview panels are common practice. If the Council were to implement this practice, it would be a specific, observable action to ensure that, thebroader community voice is guaranteed to be represented in the future town manager selection.

Carrie Hays
Yountville

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