Eugene council authorizes president to negotiate with city manager nominee "Jenny"

EUGENE, Ore. — The Eugene City Council on Jan. 14 unanimously authorized Council President Greg Evans to negotiate an employment agreement with a city manager nominee identified in the meeting transcript as "Jenny." The authorization was made after the council met in executive session on the city manager recruitment process and returned to open session to vote.

The move came during a special meeting convened for the recruitment process. Council President Greg Evans opened by thanking the search firm Bob Murray and Associates, staff and community stakeholders for their roles in assembling the finalist pool, saying, "I first would like to thank, our search firm, Bob Murray and Associates, for putting together this, tremendous process that we just went through." He then moved "to authorize council president to negotiate an employment agreement with Jenny" and specified that "final approval of [the] employment agreement [would] be approved by counsel through the consent agenda prior to its execution."

Council members praised the recruitment process and the finalists. Councilor Groves said, "I don't think it was an easy decision," while Councilor Leach called the candidate slate "three really amazing" finalists and said the discussion had been close. Councilor Keating asked whether the incoming council president (the current council vice president) could be included in negotiations; Evans replied he plans to include the vice president in those negotiations. Keating said he was "happy to support the motion." Councilor Lanka also thanked staff and community participants and said she looked forward to working with Jenny as city manager.

The Mayor called the vote and announced an 8–0 tally in favor of the motion. No public comment was taken at the work-session meeting; the Mayor had earlier stated that for work sessions there was no opportunity for public comment. The motion delegates authority to the council president to negotiate terms, with the final employment agreement required to return for legal review and placement on the consent agenda for council approval before execution.

The council adjourned after the vote. The transcript records only the nominee's first name and includes informal difficulty pronouncing the nominee's last name; the full, authoritative spelling of the nominee's surname was not provided in the public portion of the transcript.