Downstroke

Fostering the arts
The Mayor’s Arts Awards have gone this year to Marilyn Warrens, the Guy Hall family and the late Byron Thomas. In a ceremony Saturday afternoon (Sept. 30) at City Hall, Mayor Scott Gruendl presented the awards as part of the city’s Artoberfest event and Arts and Humanities Month.

Warrens is a longtime arts supporter and patron whose accomplishments are far too numerous to list here. The Hall family has a long history of supporting the arts, and Guy Hall Sr., who died last spring, had milled the fallen Hooker Oak, preserved the wood and donated the remainder to the city. Thomas, who died this summer, was a Butte College music teacher for more than 30 years, and the director of numerous choirs and other musical groups, as well as a gourmet chef.

The three recipients were selected and recommended to the mayor by the city Arts Commission.

Help Enloe find a CEO
Enloe Medical Center has hired a search firm to find it a new CEO to replace Dan Neumeister, who resigned effective July 31 after losing the confidence of the hospital’s medical staff, and it’s asking the community to let it know what to look for.

The community feedback session with the CEO search firm—Quick Leonard Keiffer, a Chicago-based headhunter specializing in the health-care industry—will be held Tuesday, Oct. 10, from 7-8 p.m. at the Enloe Conference Center, at 1528 The Esplanade (corner of Fifth Avenue).

According to a press release, the forum will give members of the public an opportunity to learn about the process and time frame for the search and to offer suggestions about the characteristics they would like to see in a CEO.

The hospital plans to later hold open forums for Enloe employees, physicians and volunteers.

The hospital is currently led by interim CEO Beth O’Brien.

Shake-up at City Hall
Four key managers in the city’s Community Services Department—Director Tony Baptiste, Assistant Director Clif Sellers, Planning Director Kim Seidler and Housing Officer Dennis McLaughlin— are retiring, a situation that presents City Manager Greg Jones (pictured) with “both a challenge and an opportunity,” as he put it in a recent memo to the City Council.

The opportunity is to create a whole new department structure. Instead of one large “super department” (Community Services) that is difficult to manage, he proposes to create four new departments that would report directly to him.

They are: Housing and Neighborhood Services, Building and Development Services, Capital Project Services and Planning Services. Jones has already selected the people to head the first three—respectively, Sherry Morgado, Fritz McKinley and Tom Varga, all current city employees. The city’s new planning director, Stephen Peterson, will be at his desk Oct. 16.

The changes are “very exciting,” Jones said this week. At its meeting Tuesday (Oct. 3), the City Council voted unanimously to direct City Attorney Dave Frank to prepare a draft ordinance for the restructuring. It will be introduced at the council’s Oct. 17 meeting.