While Mill Creek takes some time to do a nationwide search for a new city manager, the city will be in experienced hands.
Mike Caldwell, who served 13 years as city administrator in Lynnwood and has since done interim stints in five other jurisdictions, will be at the helm.
“He really knows the business,” said Lynnwood Mayor Mike McKinnon, who served on the City Council while Caldwell was city administrator.
Mill Creek City Manager Bob Stowe will leave Jan. 11 after nine years at the city to become city manager in Bothell. He submitted his resignation in November. Mill Creek will hire a search firm to do a hunt that could take up to six months, city officials said.
Caldwell, 69, retired from Lynnwood 10 years ago. But he’s kept working, serving as interim city manager in Bothell and twice in Fife, as director of the Pike Place Market in Seattle and as general manager at Olympus Terrace Sewer District in Mukilteo.
“I’ve really enjoyed that,” Caldwell said from Tucson, Ariz., where he and his wife live.
While he also enjoys the retired life of golf and tennis, “I like working with people,” he said.
Caldwell stays with relatives, including a son in Snohomish and a daughter in Woodinville, and with friends while doing his short-term gigs.
Caldwell formerly worked at Boeing and served 14 years on the Lynnwood City Council. He took a pay cut, he said, to leave Boeing for the Lynnwood city administrator job, serving as the right-hand man to longtime Mayor M.J. “Herk” Hrdlicka.
He also served for a year under Mayor Tina Roberts before retiring.
Mill Creek found Caldwell through a recruitment firm headed by Greg Prothman, a former city manager in Des Moines. The City Council interviewed Caldwell and one other candidate, Mayor Terry Ryan said. “A majority of the council informally agreed on Caldwell,” Ryan said.
Prothman’s firm will be paid $44.32 per hour of work performed by Caldwell, equaling Stowe’s salary, city clerk Kelly Hennessey said. The firm will retain about $15 per hour, and the rest will go to Caldwell, she said.
Bill Sheets is a reporter with The Herald in Everett.
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