Commission will report to council, not mayor

The Grand Coulee Civil Service Commission will offer up its top three candidates for police chief to the city council, not the mayor, Chairman Alan Cain said last week.

Cain said the decision was made after talking with a couple of council members who liked the idea.

Cain said oral examinations of the six candidates will take place in early January and the top three will move up for interviews by the council.

“We plan to have just oral exams, not written ones,” Cain said. “They have all been through the written exam phase in order to become police officers, in the first place.”

The plan to go directly to the council is a bit of a twist, but made possible, Cain said, by a recent ordinance passed by the council that its members would be asked to approve any selection by Mayor Chris Christopherson.

This would mean that the Civil Service Commission will go directly to the council for its final oral interviews and selection.

“Democracy was made for the rest of us, not the mayor,” Cain said. “This is the plan as we see it now.”

The Civil Service Commission next meets at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 5, in the council chambers at city hall.

All of this Cain hopes to accomplish during the month of January, with the chief’s selection coming in February.

The new chief will replace veteran chief Mel Hunt who retired Oct. 1. The names of the candidates have not been released by the civil service commission.