The Chadron City Council has selected Scott Meszaros of Seward, Alaska, as the next city manager.
The choice of the former Seward City Manager was unanimous despite several council members last week saying they were afraid of a 2-2 deadlock over multiple candidates.
Four finalists were scheduled to come to Chadron for interviews this week, but Michael DeMers of Texas dropped out at the last minute.
Mayor Mark Werner, Vice-Mayor Cheryl Welch, City Clerk Donna Rust, and city HR Director Bev Bartlett conducted the interviews with council members Keith Crofutt and Joe Johndreau viewing video of the interviews.
Werner says both groups ranked the candidates afterward using a matrix of 30 skills and traits, a process he feels went very well.
Werner says there were a lot of things they liked about Meszaros, including experience and communication skills.
A committee of Welch, Crofutt, Rust, and Bartlett is negotiating contract details with Meszaros with a starting salary of just under $100,000. He hopes to start as soon as possible, but Werner says when that is depends on Mother Nature.
Chadron received 30 applications for city manager following Greg Yanker’s decision to return to the private sector as an engineer at the end of last year. Retired long-time Public Works Director Milo Rust is the Interim City Manager
Meszaros spent 14 years in municipal management with 2 Colorado communities, serving as Town Clerk of Monument from 2005-2012 and Town Administrator in Meeker from 2012-2019, before becoming the Seward City Manager.
He was terminated after 18 months with no reason given, but Seward had 4 interim and acting managers the year before he was hired and the termination vote came the night 2 new members were seated on the City Council.
Meszaros was one of the original 3 finalists late last year to be city manager in Alliance, a position that was finally filled earlier this month.
Before going into city government, he was a grant writer for a sheriff’s department and adjunct faculty member at National American University in both Denver and Colorado Springs from March 2004 to Dec 2006.
He’s a veteran of the U-S Navy as an occupational therapy clinic manager from 1994 until 2000. Meszaros holds a bachelor’s degree in sports medicine from Colorado State-Pueblo and a master’s in public administration from Alabama’s Troy State.
