By Neil Farrell

Morro Bay City Council was expected to approve hiring a deputy city manager, after the city manager snatched up a leading candidate for a job in another local city.
City Manager David Buckingham presented the Council this past Tuesday with an employment contract for Sam Taylor, as deputy city manager, asking the council to ratify the document and bring Taylor onboard.
Under the proposed contract, he would make some $113,000. The contract also lists annual performance reviews by the city manager and after the first one, slated for July 1, 2016, a 5% increase based on performance, “as determined by the City Manager, in his/her sole discretion.” The contract is for three years, and either the city manager or Taylor himself can terminate. He would also get the normal benefits package including severance pay.
Joe Woods, the former recreation director, whom Buckingham let go April 24 after more than 26 years with the City, was making some $118,000 a year, and Buckingham’s staff report said because of that vacancy and Taylor’s lower starting salary, the City would still have the same number of full time equivalent employees, and adequate money in the budget to cover Taylor’s salary and even save a little money.
The timing of the two actions gives the perception that Woods’ departure was connected with Taylor’s hiring. Buckingham acknowledged the perceptions that some might have but he told The Bay News that Woods’ ouster had built up over six months. “This was not a quid-pro-quo action at all,” he said.
Taylor, 30, had been deputy city administrator in Ferndale, Wash., and had previously been the city clerk and community information officer from January 2011 to the present. He told The Bay News in a phone interview on Monday that he’d applied for the same position in Atascadero.
He said Ferndale had been working hard to keep him and after being told he had the Atascadero job, Taylor said he had second thoughts and decided, “the Atascadero job might not be a good fit,” in part because he would have to be part of the “executive team.”
So he pulled out of that process and the Morro Bay job soon landed in his lap. “Dave was on one of the three panels I spoke to,” he explained. He was surprised when Buckingham later contacted him and offered a job in Morro Bay. “A few days after,” he said, “he contacted me and said ‘I want to hire you,’ which was very flattering.”
He added that the vision for the position was “very interesting.” He was 99.9% sure he wanted the job and flew down from Washington to scope out the town. He met April 18-21 with Buckingham, council members Christine Johnson and John Headding, former interim city manager Ed Kreins and Bob Davis over those three days. “It was a whirlwind weekend” wherein he was able to get the feel of the town, and the vision for its future — to build up community — something he’d been doing in Ferndale.
The similarity of the two towns also became apparent during that visit. “Morro Bay and Ferndale are both about community,” he said. Ferndale (Pop. 12,000) is a bedroom community outside Bellingham (Pop. over 90,000) and similar to Morro Bay, which Taylor said is “very tourism focused.”
He is planning to move his family — wife, two little boys with a third child on the way — in the coming weeks and he starts work June 1, provided the City Council ratified his contract at Tuesday’s meeting.
Buckingham said the hire was prompted by the City Council adopting some 10 goals and 73 objectives for him to achieve this year. “Many are directly related to the skills that we don’t currently have in the City,” Buckingham said. “I can’t do all those things and manager everything else.”
As an example, he cited economic outreach. “One of his responsibilities will be to win businesses to come to Morro Bay.”
Taylor will handle all aspects of city communications — PR, social media, public information, mailers and most importantly — listening, Buckingham said. He will also head up an IT goal to fundamentally remake how the city uses the Internet to communicate and serve the community. “Those are the big three areas where he’s got exceptional skills,” Buckingham said, that we didn’t have resident on our staff.”