Vice Mayor Dean Chu is chairman of the committee that, along with council members Ron Swegles and Melinda Hamilton, had begun discussing how the city should go about finding a new city manager when the search was postponed.

"We decided to hold off until after the budget was approved," Chu said, saying that the budget should be approved by mid-June to meet the July 1 start of the fiscal year.

In March, Chu said the search could take between six and nine months, meaning it could be March of next year before Sunnyvale has a permanent city manager to fill the void left by Robert LaSala when he left city employment in February.

In the meantime, former assistant city manager Amy Chan is handling the manager's duties for the city, and Chu said she

reiterated her plan to stay with the city as long as she is needed.

"We have an interim city manager who is very well qualified and with her, we know we can proceed at a measured pace," Chu said. "We want to do this right, we don't want to speed through the process."

Currently, the committee has produced a list of seven or eight potential firms to perform the searching and checking process for potential candidates.