The Leelanau County Board of Commissioners will not be hiring someone to fill the county’s administrator/CFO job – at least not for now.

Three months after kicking off the search for Leelanau County’s next leader, commissioners decided at a special meeting Friday morning not to choose one of the two candidates they selected earlier this week as finalists. Instead, the board voted to negotiate a contract extension with Interim Administrator Richard Lewis, with hopes that Lewis can solve the county’s long-running issues with its finance department. And if Lewis can indeed resolve the growing pains around that department, commissioners may consider dropping the CFO part of the position and simply seeking an administrator.

The search for a new county leader is likely to recommence later this summer or early this fall.

The decision comes after a two-phase interview process that began with a crop of seven candidates, narrowed down to four, and then narrowed again to two finalists. Commissioners chose those finalists – Kip Belcher and Michael Belsky – following a seven-hour day of interviews this past Monday. Board Chair Ty Wessell and Chet Janik, the consultant leading the search process, then conducted detailed reference checks of both candidates ahead of Friday’s special meeting.

While Wessell noted early Friday that he and Janik “got a lot of very positive feedback” about the two finalists, he also said he’d had a conversation with Lewis on Thursday afternoon about the latter potentially staying in the interim administrator role for a little bit longer.

“I talked to Mr. Lewis about, if we didn’t decide to move forward right now, would he be willing to stay on and allow the next board of commissioners to make the appointment of an administrator?” Wessell said, before explaining his reasoning: “Between the two [finalists] we’ve got exactly what we need [for an administrator and CFO]. But as I talked to references and as I talked to Chet, it seemed like the skillset for the one position was not there.”

“Mr. Lewis would be willing to stay on with us and continue the process of moving us forward,” Wessell added.

Commissioners were generally in agreement that neither Belcher nor Belsky quite met their expectations for a combined administrator/CFO role – a hybrid position they created earlier this year because of ongoing turmoil within the county’s finance department.

“I think when we crafted this administrator/CFO position, we were looking for someone to help us get through the creation of this finance department, which…we have not done well with,” said Commissioner Doug Rexroat. While Rexroat was the commissioner who proposed the creation of the join administrator/CFO position in the first place, he admitted that the individual the board was looking for was likely a “unicorn” and would be difficult to find.

“It’s my understand that Mr. Lewis is doing a good job with all of the staff and all of the people involved in this process, and he’s got the respect of them, and perhaps he is our unicorn,” Rexroat reasoned. “I would be comfortable continuing on with him.”

Lewis is retired and has not expressed interest in taking on Leelanau’s administrator role permanently. However, Rexroat argued that Lewis has already made significant progress on establishing function and stability within the finance department, to the point where he was no longer sure the county even needed to be looking for a CFO. “Then we aren’t looking for a unicorn after that; we’re just looking for a good administrator,” Rexroat said.

Commissioners ultimately voted 6-0 (Jamie Kramer, the seventh commissioner, was absent) to have Wessell negotiate a contract extension with Lewis to keep him on as interim administrator. Wessell intends to present the outcome of those negotiations at the board’s next regular meeting, scheduled for next Tuesday (June 18).

As for the eventual hire of a new leader, Janik urged commissioners to try to finish the process before the end of the year, to avoid putting that burden on a new incoming board. (All seven commission seats are up for election this November.) When the process does restart, likely in August or September, commissioners will have to decide whether to seek an administrator/CFO as originally planned, or just an administrator.

When that moment comes, at least one candidate from this spring’s interview process could also be back in the mix: Board members agreed that Belsky could be a good fit for the county and should be encouraged to reapply. Commissioner Melinda Lautner even suggested scheduling a third interview with Belsky sooner rather than later.

“I really do think a day with Mr. Belsky could tell us a lot one way or another,” Lautner said. “If we’re moving forward with finance, he would have the ability to do that. And then, obviously, as [that department] got firmly entrenched, he would be able to concentrate on administration only.”