"The council has budgeted $23,000 for the recruitment process, which will come from general fund reserves."

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Money well spent, and will return dividends in spades, if the recruiting process identifies a candidate that can run this City as well as the outgoing City Manager has.

The City should be able to conduct their own search as people will be falling over themselves for this job. This is a $23k gift to the Head Hunter.

A big thank you to City Manager Kevin Duggan for a job well done. It shows when you hire a local and not someone from out of the area who is passing through and they are just looking at this as a stop in building their own career.

The $23K is listed for the "recruitment process". Presumably that's in addition to the headhunter "fee", which would typically be a percentage (20-30%?) of the hired employee's salary.

Not weighing in on good/bad...just pointing out that most likely the expense goes well beyond $23K. The actual terms should be in the headhunter contract.

"The City should be able to conduct their own search as people will be falling over themselves for this job. This is a $23k gift to the Head Hunter."

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Ummm...the article states that the City has selected the same headhunter that recruited Kevin Duggan, so there's no historical proof that an inhouse search is going to be successful in identifying the right candidate.

Also, the City Manager's job is relatively specialized as a category, not even taking into consideration the specific requirements or success factors that would be desirable for a city like Mountain View.

Just because people will be falling over themselves for this job doesn't make them good candidates. In fact, its arguably harder to select a candidate when you have too many to choose from.

Hiring a headhunter is like a sieve. They will vet the majority of candidates so that the City has a qualified list of candidates to choose from.