At a special meeting held Tuesday, the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners winnowed down a pool of 37 applicants to nine who will be invited to interview for the vacant county administrator role next Monday and Tuesday, November 18 and 19. Interviewees include a few familiar faces from the spring, when county commissioners last looked for a county leader.

Commissioners previously sought a county administrator two years ago, conducting a nationwide search before selecting Deb Allen of Elmwood Township,  then the executive director of development and community engagement at Grand Traverse Pavilions. Allen came aboard at the county in December 2022, but left earlier this year after commissioners decided to seek a hybrid administrator/chief financial officer to help right the ship with Leelanau’s struggling finance department. Allen’s last day was April 12.

In March, the Board of Commissioners kicked off the search for Allen’s replacement, interviewing seven preliminary candidates and advancing four of them to a second round. But commissioners struggled to find a candidate who checked all the boxes of the newly-created hybrid role. That difficulty, along with a general feeling on the board that Interim Administrator Richard Lewis was solving many of the county’s finance department woes, caused commissioners to table the matter of hiring a new leader.

Five months later, with a stable finance department finally in place, commissioners have scrapped the CFO idea and are simply seeking a new administrator. Back in the county’s corner for the search is consultant Chet Janik, a former Leelanau County administrator himself, who also spearheaded the admin/CFO search this spring. Janik was on hand at Tuesday’s meeting to lay the groundwork for the new interview process.

Working on behalf of the county, Janik posted an administrator job listing on October 2 and accepted applications until November 7, a 36-day span that resulted in 37 candidates. Janik distributed resumes and cover letters to county commissioners last Friday, and board members took the weekend going through those materials and offering feedback.

After going into closed session to discuss, commissioners voted to invite nine of the applicants to interview for the administrator role. Those interviews are scheduled to take place next week, starting at 9:30am on Monday.

The candidates are as follows:

>Kipling Belcher, currently the multijurisdictional task force commander for the Michigan State Police’s Seventh District in Gaylord. Belcher previously applied for the administrator/CFO position in the spring, and was one of four finalists to make it to the second round of interviews.

>Mark Brown, a Lake Leelanau-based CPA who currently serves as CFO for the Michigan/Ohio groups of MediaNews Group, a news media organization. Brown’s resume describes him as a “hands-on executive with broad competencies in administration, finance, planning, accounting and IT management.”

>Eric Ceci of Crescent City, Illinois, currently the public health administrator for the Iroquois County Public Health Department. He previously worked two other roles for that Illinois county: public health emergency preparedness director for the health department and director of the county’s emergency management agency.

>James Dyer of Suttons Bay, known best to Leelanau County residents as the current village manager in Northport. Before taking the Northport job last year, Dyer served as chief legal officer for Calhoun County.

>Brandon Fewins of Traverse City, whose background mostly consists of state and federal government work. Since 2021, Fewins has been Michigan’s state director for USDA Rural Development. Before that, he spent more than 17 years as regional manager for United States Senator Debbie Stabenow, acting as her liaison in 27 Lower Michigan counties.

>James Kiessel, the current undersheriff for the Leelanau County Sheriff’s Office. Like Belcher, Kiessel went through the administrator interview process earlier this year.

>Matthew Marske, who recently retired to Suttons Bay after a career spent in the criminal justice system. Most recently, Marske worked as the CEO and warden of the Federal Correctional Institution Oxford in Wisconsin. He now works as director of operators for Verterra Winery in Leland, as well as a realtor for the Leelanau Group.

>Robert Reinshuttle of Tallahassee, Florida – another applicant who was in the mix for the spring admin search. Reinshuttle most recently served as deputy county administrator and acting public safety director for Florida’s Manatee County.

>Jeffrey Thornton, who left his previous job as village manager and clerk of Caledonia earlier this year. Prior to that role, Thornton served as city manager for Negaunee, another small Michigan town.

Provided that all nine candidates agree to proceed, county commissioners will conduct nine one-hour interviews between Monday and Tuesday next week. Janik told the board he would start emailing the candidates immediately to schedule interviews.

The board had previously discussed having newly-elected county commissioners sit in on administrator interviews and offer their feedback, even though those individuals won’t take office until January. Despite some lingering uncertainty about who will actually be elected to the county board – results aren’t expected to be certified until late this week or early next – Janik said he would “reach out to the candidates and invite them to the meetings, give them copies of the resumes, and then encourage them to come to the interviews. And if they have any comments or questions, to contact their commissioner.”

In other board news…

Deciding which administrator applicants to interview was just one part of a busy Tuesday for county commissioners.

At the same special session, the board voted to appoint Melvin Black, a member of the Leelanau County Planning Commission and a former chairman for the Muskegon County Road Commission, to fill a vacancy on the Leelanau County Road Commission board. That open slot was created when longtime road commission John Popa tragically passed away this summer. Commissioners selected Black over Tim Lodge, formerly the city engineer for the City of Traverse City.

The board also had an executive session earlier in the day where they heard from County Clerk Michelle Crocker about a controversial issue regarding uncounted votes in Leelanau County. The Leelanau Ticker broke that story last Friday, after it came to light during canvassing that a batch of early votes had not been reported in election night totals.

Crocker explained to commissioners that the issue was due to a mix-up where approximately 1,600 sample ballots from an election “logic and accuracy” test conducted last month were mistakenly reported instead of 3,156 ballots from Leelanau’s early in-person voting site. The change will likely swing multiple county and township races, though Crocker stressed that Leelanau County’s results are still unofficial.

Crocker also assured commissioners that all votes were counted and tabulated” and that “there were no missing ballots.”

“The process is working,” she said of Leelanau’s canvassing. “There is no conspiracy going on here.”