By Kalin Krohe, Panhandle Post
The Chadron City Council recently voted to approve an employment agreement with Scott Meszaros as the new city manager.
The council has been searching for a new city manager since January.
"Scott's a navy veteran," Chadron Mayor Mark Werner said. "He served about six years at Bethesda Naval Hospital [Walter Reed National Military Medical Center]. He then got out and got into public service. Eventually he was a clerk in one Front Range [Colorado] community and city manager in another Front Range community. And from there he went up to Seward, Alaska and spent two years as the city manager there."
Werner told Panhandle Post this has been his second time helping choose a city manager for Chadron.
"By doing it ourselves and leveraging the new technologies, it went really well," Werner said. "We had five former city managers apply and then some really interesting folks that were segueing into another part of their career. The technology is fantastic to get good candidates. We also hired a firm to do a background search for public record stuff and we also hired another firm to look at their online footprint. That was new to us. The other thing we did different this time is that we took the three finalists around to meet the staff in their work places. The department heads gave us some informal feedback on how they thought the candidates interacted with the staff."
Chadron council voted 4-0 to hire Meszaros. One of the council members could not vote because he applied for the position.
"Scott is the type of guy that loves to go out and meet people...and kind of sense what people are thinking," Werner said. "He communicates well and he enjoys doing it."
Werner could not give an official date when Meszaros will begin the new position.
"We're not quit sure how quickly he can get here, given when the overland routes through Canada are going to be open," Werner said. "He's going to have to make at least two trips. He's got a moving van he's going to drive, then he's going to fly back up and pull his RV. It might not be as quick as we'd hope to get him actually in the chair."