Philomath hires successor to longtime city recorder

The Philomath City Council during its Oct. 14 meeting approved the city manager’s appointment for a new city recorder. Crystal Weber is scheduled to begin her duties in the position Oct. 29, succeeding longtime city recorder Ruth Post, who plans to retire.

Workman said the city received 83 applications for the job and of those, nine were initially interviewed by the city manager, assistant city manager and a member of the finance department. Following the first round of interviews, three finalists were interviewed by a panel made up of the city manager, assistant city manager and three city councilors.

The city manager then made a recommendation to appoint the top applicant to the full City

Council, as required by Philomath’s city charter.

The city recorder is responsible for the maintenance of all official documents, coordinates meeting schedules with elected and appointed officials, provides the public with legal notices, serves as the elections officer, provides community outreach and serves through many other roles at City Hall, Workman said.

Weber will come to the city from Engelmann-Becker Corp., a Eugene-based educational services company that develops instructional materials for students, where she has worked since 2014. Workman mentioned that she has already volunteered to participate with the city in this year’s Trunk or Treat event on Oct. 31, which is just a couple of days after her start date.

Post, a 25-year employee with the city who has served as the city recorder since 2002, will remain on the staff until Nov. 13 to provide some overlap for training purposes.

A motion to approve Weber as the city recorder passed on a 6-0-1 vote. Councilor Christopher McMorran felt that he needed to abstain from voting based on what he felt was a lack of information on the candidate that could be shared during the meeting. Workman did not publicly identify by name the candidate at the time because he said she did not want to give notice to her current employer without the guarantee of being approved for the job.

Councilor Jessica Andrade, who was among those on the hiring committee, said Weber came through during the interview process as very detail oriented and appeared to fit the city manager’s stated needs. Councilor Matt Lehman, also on the panel involved with the hire, said Weber also appeared to be tech-savvy with a lot of database management experience.

“One of the things that I liked about this applicant was that it doesn’t feel like this was a stepping stone to bigger and better things — at least in their responses — and seemed very content to be here and learn,” Workman added. “This individual specifically showed everybody the most excitement and hunger to learn about the job and grow into the job.”

Mayor Chas Jones shared kind words for Post as an irreplaceable city recorder with the wide range of skills that she brought to the position for more than two decades.