LEWISTON — Councilors should begin interviewing prospective city administrator candidates the last week of October, they agreed Tuesday.

Councilors met behind closed doors briefly before their regular meeting to go over resume recommendations from a citizens’ committee and decide when to begin meeting potential replacements for former administrator Jim Bennett.

“It’s about as early as we could have hoped for,” Human Resources Director Denis Jean said. He’d originally hoped to begin interviews the previous week, but some councilors could not attend meetings that week.

Jean said he expects the interviews to begin the week of Oct. 26. He hopes to schedule 90-minute interviews each night for two nights and a single interview on the third night. Specific dates have not been set yet.

“That’s going to depend on the candidates themselves,” he said.

Members of the hiring committee will be asked to participate in the interviews, he said.

“The councilors really want to interview the candidates themselves, but they want the committee to participate,” Jean said. “The idea is to have the committee in the room listening, but to have some time set aside for them to ask questions.”

The city’s
hiring committee finished reviewing a stack of 41 resumes last week and
selected five names for the City Council to review. Councilors formed the committee in September, tasking them to select
the five best candidates. They required the committee to report back by
Oct. 15.

The candidates’ names are not being made public, Jean said.

staylor@sunjournal.com