Williston City Planner Jackie Gorman was named city manager Tuesday and C.J. Zimoski was hired as deputy city manager. He will serve as the interim city manager until Gorman officially accepts the position next week.
By Terry Witt – Senior Spotlight Reporter
Williston City Planner Jackie Gorman received a pleasant surprise Tuesday night when the city council gave her the job of city manager.
Utilities Director C.J. Zimoski was named deputy city manager, a new position. Zimoski also will serve as interim city manager until Gorman takes over the top administrative job next week.
They haven’t been officially hired yet, but the council has given the green light to promoting both to the top two manager jobs.
Police Chief Dennis Strow served as interim city manager for the past four months after the resignation of Scott Lippmann. He told the council he realized as time went on in the role interim manager, that there was a need for a second administrator to work with the city manager.
“It’s almost too much for one person to try to keep up with or take a day off. The phone rings constantly. I think the city manager and deputy city manager is the way to go,” Strow said.
A week earlier, Councilwoman Debra Jones pitched out the idea of Gorman and Zimoski sharing city manager duties since they are knowledgeable of the city and work well together and both are top-level administrators.
Council President Justin Head said Strow’s comments made the most sense to him. He said he couldn’t wrap his head around having two city managers, but creating a deputy manager position from existing staff sounded like a better option.
The entire council was on board with naming Gorman as city manager. She will earn an annual salary of $77,500, a few thousand dollars more than she makes now as city planner. Zimoski, as deputy city manager, will earn $75,000, a small raise over what he is paid now.
Zimoski will continue to run the city’s utilities, a huge job. He will work closely with Gorman in the same way he did with Lippmann before Lippmann’s resignation.
“We’re still doing the same thing. It won’t change a lot. Scott and I worked close together, so aside from title changes, it’s not going to change a whole lot,” he said.
Gorman, who worked for 40 years in city government didn’t make the final cut several weeks ago when four finalists were named from a slate of 106 city manager applicants. The council at that time was looking for someone with previous city manager experience and thought they had found one in Andrew Hyatt, but he turned down the job. Gorman has no city manager experience.
The council considered restarting the search for a city manager or hiring research experts to assist them in finding the right candidate or picking someone from the original list of 105 candidates. But Head said he felt that a new search would probably have turned up the same candidates they had already turned down. And they were also running out of time. Strow didn’t want the job as city manager. He loves being police chief. He wanted to go back to being the city’s top cop. And the new fiscal year was about to begin on Oct. 1.
The council learned the hard way when Lippmann resigned that they had no backup administrator who could take over operations of the city on a moment’s notice. The deputy city manager fills that need. Zimoski and Gorman are considered top-flight administrators. Councilwoman Marguerite Robinson said Gorman runs a well-oiled machine in city planning and she hates to lose her in that position.
Head said he is comfortable with the administrators they have selected to run the city.
“I do believe this will be a great fit for the city with this new potion of deputy city manager giving us the continuity and ability to continue forward should something happen to the city manager. It gives us someone to run the city,” Head said. “The big plus if you have two people who have been here – they have the knowledge and experience to carry it forward.”
Gorman said she was thrilled with the council’s offer.
“I’m honored to be selected,” she said. “I’ve had a great career and I always knew in the later part of my life that I’d like to achieve the top position at some point. I’ve had an offer a couple of times in my life and turned them down. I wanted to save it. I’m here now and grateful for the opportunity.”
Gorman said she was a late bloomer educationally, earning her bachelor’s degree in the year 2000. She said working in city government is her profession and she looks forward to taking over the city’s top administrative position. She lives in Inverness but said she would consider living in an RV at Williston Crossings to be closer to the city she manages. The city manager contract includes language that the city manager must live close to the city. The language of her contract will indicate temporary housing in Williston is an acceptable alternative.
The city council will meet in regular session next Tuesday to approve her contract and also approve the job description for deputy city manager. The job description hasn’t been written.
In other business, the council approved a property tax rate of 6.50 mills, an increase of 3.28 percent for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1. They also gave final approval to a budget of $12.9 million for fiscal year 2020-21.
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City of Williston Budget Hearing and Special Meeting September 29, 2020; Posted September 29, 2020
