Ishpeming city manager to retire, effective June 2019

NEGAUNNE — The city of Ishpeming held a special meeting on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the resignation of their city manager and possible future steps for a new manager.

After 6 years of working as Ishpeming’s City manager, Mark Slown has decided to retire going into effect on June 5, 2019.

Today, the city board has approved the resignation and will begin the search for a new city manager.

The board is looking at using the Michigan Municipal League (MML) to help with their search although it is not set in stone.

“Well I think we’re hoping to have something rolling within the next 3 weeks maybe, 4 weeks. It’s never going to be a quick process, I’m sure we’re not going to have somebody ready to step in at the time Mark is finished” said Ishpeming City Mayor, Karl Lehmann.

With the manager leaving, the city has multiple projects going on, such as the sewer project, water projects, budgets and union negotiations, which the manager is included in.

If the board were to use MML for the hiring process, the average search time using them takes around 4 months.

There are still multiple questions and factors that need to be worked out before hiring MML to help.