SEQUIM — The City Council displayed three finalists for city manager to the public Friday night, but by Sunday they were gone.

None of the three will work out, Mayor Laura Dubois said.

“We could not reach compensation agreements with any of them,” she said.

The council did not offer the job to any of the three, and it discovered in the interview process that an agreement would not be reached, she said.

So it’s back to the drawing board for the City Council, which will meet tonight to discuss its options.

The council will meet at 6 p.m. at the Transit Center, 190 W. Cedar St.

The finalists introduced to the public Friday night were Curt Carver, 53, city administrator of Inverness, Ill.; Alan Lanning, 50, former city manager of Steamboat Springs, Colo.; and Jim Southworth, 60, administrative officer of Monroe, southeast of Snohomish.

The salary range that the council was prepared to offer and had advertised for was between $95,000 and $115,000 annually.

“We couldn’t with any of the three reach an agreement on the total compensation package,” Dubois said.

After about 40 citizens turned out to meet the three finalists on Friday night, the City Council, city department heads and a citizens’ panel interviewed the three on Saturday.

January arrival hoped

The council had hoped to select a candidate and begin negotiations over the weekend — in time to have the new manager on board in January.

But Dubois said she now was unsure how things would proceed.

“We are just thinking about it over this weekend and we will talk about it on Monday at the meeting,” she said Sunday.

She said the council might re-¬­examine the pool of candidates who had applied for the job, or it might start the search over.

The city manager position has been vacant since the council voted on May 5 to fire Bill Elliott.

Police Chief Robert Spinks has been filling in as interim manager since then, and the council members hired a retired city manager, Lee Walton, as a consultant to help them find a permanent manager.

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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsula dailynews.com.