The Leelanau County Board of Commissioners could choose their new hire for the county administrator/CFO position this coming Friday. Or, the board could decide to go back to the drawing board.

That was the key takeaway from a marathon seven-hour special meeting Monday, when commissioners interviewed four candidates for the position. Those finalists – Mark Justin, Kip Belcher, Michael Belsky, and Tracy Byard – were the ones commissioners chose to advance after interviewing seven applicants earlier this month. All four were on hand Monday for in-depth 90-minute interviews.

While Justin and Byard had garnered the most support after initial interviews – all seven commissioners voted to advance both candidates to the next round – it was Belcher and Belsky who emerged as the top picks on Monday.

Following the second round of interviews, Chet Janik – the consultant leading the board through the hiring process – asked each commissioner to name their top two candidates. Three board members –Kama Ross, Doug Rexroat, and Ty Wessell – listed Belcher and Belsky. Two others, Melinda Lautner and Gwenne Algaier, initially named just one candidate apiece: Byard in Lautner’s case, Belsky in Algaier’s – though Lautner later settled on Belcher as her second choice. Commissioner James O’Rourke finally threw his support behind Belcher and Byard. (A seventh commissioner, Jamie Kramer, had to leave the meeting before deliberations and was not on hand to cast her vote.)

Lautner stumped heartily for Byard, arguing that the applicant’s current position – Byard is the county administrator for Michigan’s Oceana County and handles numerous financial responsibilities – is the best match with Leelanau County's needs.

“She brings administrative experience already,” Lautner said of Byard. “And she also has a financial [background] that I thought we were looking for. She’s been doing amendments and transfers and working with funds already…That was the reason I put her at the top. She had both of [the things] we were looking for.”

Despite Lautner’s defense, Byard drew little support from other commissioners. Rexroat agreed that Byard was a good match on paper, but suggested she was missing the “intangible” feeling he was looking for in a county leader.

“As far as dotting I’s and crossing T’s, it was all there,” Rexroat said of Byard. “And if we didn’t need someone to move us forward and have that zip…that’s just what I didn’t get. And that’s an intangible. It’s not a measurable thing.”

Justin, who most recently served as county administrator for Gladwin County, was eliminated from contention after garnering no votes of support.

While consensus formed around Belcher and Belsky as the top picks, commissioners were relatively lukewarm on both.

“I’m going to say: I have reservations about both of them,” Rexroat said. “I have reservations about all four, but I have less reservations about those two.”

Commissioners seemed to agree that Belcher, who is the multijurisdictional task force commander for the Michigan State Police’s seventh district in Gaylord, would make an ideal county administrator, but might lack the financial acumen the county is seeking for the newly-created CFO part of the job. 

“I liked Kip Belcher; I wish he had interviewed a year ago,” said Allgaier. “But we changed this position to include CFO, and I don’t see how we can justify hiring someone with none of those skills. Well, not none, but limited. We can’t justify changing the position if we’re not going to look for someone with different credentials. He’d be a wonderful administrator, but we changed [the job].”

Notably, former administrator Deb Allen stepped down from the role when commissioners voted to add the CFO aspect, acknowledging that she did not have a financial background.

Belsky does have both leadership and financial experience: He’s a former mayor of Highland Park, Illinois and serves as principal for EKI Digital, a company that does “financial analysis of state and local government clients to determine the fiscal wherewithal to invest in digital innovation.” Despite that experience, though, Belsky drew criticism from O’Rourke, who worried the candidate’s idealistic attitude might actually be an impediment.

“He’s got so many ideas and plans and stuff…and we haven’t got time,” O’Rourke said of Belsky.

Commissioners ultimately agreed to have Janik and Wessell conduct reference checks on both Belcher and Belsky, with plans to reconvene for another special meeting this Friday to discuss. 

“[We’ll] decide if we want to narrow it down from two [candidates] to one, or two to zero,” Wessell said, before noting that he “cannot see proceeding without at least one more opportunity to meet with the finalists.”

“I’m not sure I’m ready to offer the job even to the two people I’ve mentioned,” Rexroat shared. “You asked me to give two names, but I can’t tell you I’m comfortable with either of them right now. We’ve got to get this right, and if it don’t feel like all things are firing on all cylinders, then we can do [the candidate search] again. I’d rather do it again than do it wrong. We’ve done too much wrong.”

The full candidate interviews can be watched here.