For Shrives, top task is finding his replacement
Mark Shrives is interim city manager.
By CHRIS PETERSON
Hungry Horse News
In addition to running the city on a daily basis, Columbia Falls interim city manager Mark Shrives has one main goal in his temporary tenure here: Find a new city manager.
Shrives said the city will soon send out requests for proposals for a recruitment firm to find prospective candidates. (The council approved the measure last week.)
Since longtime manager Susan Nicosia retired, the city has had two finalist candidates fall through. One was found to have previous ethics violations and the other dropped out due to family reasons.
On this third go-round, the city’s search will take a broader approach by using a recruiting firm.
“My goal is to get someone on board” before his six-month contract ends, Shrive said. Shrive, 69, is no stranger to city government. He was the Polson city manager from 2013 to 2018, was the manager in Creswell, Oregon for nine years and was the city administrator for the city of Hamilton, Montana, for six years.
His last stint in government was working for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He retired in 2023.
When Nicosia reached out to him to see if he would be willing to fill in on an interim basis, he said he was happy to help. He knows how difficult the process can be.
Being the manager of a small city can actually be more difficult than a large one, as larger cities typically have more staff, Shrives noted, and they take care of some of the minute tasks, like preparing a city council packet, for example.
Nicosia is still available, too. She’s working under contract on large grants the city has garnered in the past few years, seeing them to fruition. Most notable is a federal RAISE grant that’s more than $10 million and will help the city rebuild 13th Street West at the high school at Fourth Avenue West to Glacier Gateway School.
She’s also around if Shrives has a question about the city’s workings.
“It’s really nice to have her here,” he said.
Shrives he has no plans to make any changes to the city’s business operations – he won’t be here long enough to see them through, he notes.
If all goes well, the city should have a new permanent city manager by the end of February.