Saratoga News

The city makes job offer to Finance Director candidate

By Sarah Lombardo

The Saratoga City Council has authorized City Manager Larry Perlin to make a job offer to a prospective candidate for finance director.

The authorization was given at a closed session of the council Aug. 5, according to Perlin, who declined to release the name of the candidate until the offer had been made.

The position has been vacant since former director Thomas Fil resigned in October 1997 to take a job with the city of Belmont.

Fil was hired as the city's finance director in 1995 to replace Patricia Shriver, who was asked to resign in February of that year after being accused of misappropriating city funds to the tune of $6,500.

During the city's re-organization in 1997 following the defeat of the utility-users tax in November 1996, the finance director's position was expanded to include human resources and other administrative tasks. The position was renamed administrative services director.

After Fil's departure, the city contracted with Deborah Larson, the former finance director for Mariposa (Ariz.) County, to be the administrative services director on an interim basis.

By the end of last year, however, Perlin told the council he didn't think the city's first re-organization--which consolidated several departments and positions in an effort to reduce the city's budget--was working. The newly created positions, he said, were making recruitment difficult. Perlin proposed a new reorganization plan. Larson was then named the city's assistant city manager earlier this year, and the city hired Oliver Wright as the new finance director, also on an interim basis, shortly afterward.

After so many changes in the city's finance department over the past year, Vice Mayor Jim Shaw said he was pleased at the prospect that the finance director position might finally be filled permanently.

"We need to have this position filled," Shaw said, adding that with the city looking to develop a five-year financial plan, "we need to have all the smarts available to us."

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