SEQUIM — Although it’s still a mystery who the finalists will be for the Sequim city manager job, the City Council has chosen a date for them to meet the public.

A reception for the top three or four candidates will be held on the evening of Nov. 7, City Councilman Ken Hays said on Thursday.

On Nov. 8, the finalists will face three panels for a full day of interviews.

The first panel is the seven-member City Council; the others will be made up of city department heads and representatives from the Sequim School District and the business and nonprofit sectors.

“Hopefully, a deal will be made by Nov. 9” to hire the new manager, Hays said.

The council members met Wednesday night in a closed session to review a field of nine candidates for the city’s top job.

They found that one applicant had dropped out, and they then eliminated one other candidate, Hays said.

The council sent the remaining seven names back to city human resources director Kathy Brown “to ask more questions,” he said.

Hays was among the four new council members who voted to fire then-manager Bill Elliott on May 5 and appoint Police Chief Robert Spinks interim city manager.

Spinks has said he has no interest in being the city’s permanent boss.

What Sequim needs, Hays said, is a strong leader who’s “savvy about growth and development issues . . . and who gets out there and works with the community.

“A lot of the anxiety people have had over growth and development has been due to very little communication” from the city manager, Hays said.

He wants a chief who will lead town-hall meetings on a regular basis and address service clubs and chambers of commerce.

Elliott, who’d run Sequim for nearly eight years, wasn’t a high-profile manager, but since Spinks has taken the wheel, “it’s been like night and day,” added Mayor Laura Dubois.

Spinks writes “weekly wraps” and posts them on the city Web site, www.ci.Sequim.wa.us, along with the 2009 Budget Goal-Setting and Strategy Presentation, one of his many lengthy reports.

“We as council members know so much more of what’s going on since May 5,” Dubois said.

In the search for a new manager, she’s looked at a lot of other city Web sites, including some that have a complaint/question form residents can submit online.

The mayor likes that idea — and anything that penetrates the walls of City Hall.

“People have a lot of distrust of government,” she said.

If residents could check the Web site and read regular updates, she believes trust would increase.

Both Dubois and Hays also want more transparency in financial matters.

Sequim is facing a $400,000 revenue shortfall that will make the 2009 budget process a difficult one, with the council having to decide how much of its reserves to spend on maintaining staff and services.

“We need a long-range financial plan. We should be budgeting five years out,” Hays said.

“We should have healthy reserves” from the years since Wal-Mart, The Home Depot and Costco Wholesale began generating healthy sales-tax revenues.

“I’m not sure where all the money went,” Hays said.

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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or diane.urbani@ peninsuladailynews.com.