The meeting is set for 6 p.m. at City Hall.
“Obviously, we will try to make this decision Monday night,” Mayor Bill Hereford said after he and the council interviewed five men Friday who applied for the street superintendent’s job.
Those interviewed included former Councilman Greg Gossett, who resigned from his District 1 Council seat Monday night so he could apply for the vacant department head position.
“I think I can serve my city better in this position,” Gossett told his former colleagues during his interview Friday.
Gossett officially applied for the department head job on Wednesday, two days after he resigned from the council.
The street superintendent position is vacant after Mike Martin officially retired Friday.
The vacant position offers a salary ranging from $50,860-$67,871.
Also interviewed Friday were two current Street Department employees, Phillip McCollough and Jonathan Campbell. Two other candidates who interviewed for the job, and who are not city employees, were John Boyle and Brian Connely Sr., both of Pell City.
The position was only advertised on the city’s website at epell.net.
Connely and Boyle said they found out about the job opening either through friends or family employed by the city, not the website.
In the past, city jobs were advertised through the Alabama State Employment Service, if there were no qualified applicants employed by the city, but Councilman Donnie Todd said that’s not necessarily the case.
He said the city manager’s job was advertised with the League of Municipalities.
“I don’t want to sound arrogant, but obviously we could do it any way we want to do it,” Todd said.
Although the city did advertise the city manager’s position with the League of Municipalities, the position was also advertised through the Alabama State Employment Service twice, according to another city official.
Todd said city officials were trying to get away from using the Alabama State Employment Service to fill positions because of past problems with that agency providing names of qualified candidates.
Even though the council approved an ordinance in August 2009 eliminating the requirement for the city to advertise job vacancies with the State Employment Service, officials said all department head positions that the current administration has filled were advertised through the service. Those positions included the city engineer, fire chief and city manager.
The fire chief position was also advertised through the Alabama State Fire College.
“I was told by the mayor this was done the same way we’ve done everything else,” Councilwoman Dot Wood said Friday. “We’re just trying to fill the position with the best possible candidate.”
She said the council is not involved with advertising city jobs.
“We don’t have anything to do with that,” Wood said.
According to the city’s personnel rules and regulations manual, if no qualified applicant is available from eligible city employees, the personnel officer will initiate outside recruitment actions.
Todd said Friday he thought there were three “very strong” candidates.
Contact David Atchison at datchison@dailyhome.com.
