Steamboat Pilot & Today

Oak Creek — The Oak Creek Board of Trustees meets tonight to discuss how to go about picking a town manager.

The town has invited the regional field manager of the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, Cathy Shipley, and Hayden Town Manager Rob Straebel to talk to the board and the public about the town manager position.

"A lot of the meeting is going to be about how we will go about doing this," Mayor Deb VanGundy said.

Trustees also instructed acting treasurer Nancy Stahoviak to collect job descriptions and salaries of town managers from around the state for the board to review. From that information, the trustees will attempt to create their own job description for an Oak Creek town manager, which will include the responsibilities of the treasurer.

Towns making the move to create the position usually need someone to oversee finances and administrative duties in all departments, Shipley said.

"Without a person over that, it's difficult," she said.

Though she wasn't completely familiar with Oak Creek's specific challenges, Shipley said money usually is the biggest hurdle that towns face when creating a town manager position.

"How you pay for it is an issue you're going to have to grapple with," she said.

Of the job descriptions and salaries collected, Hayden and Kremmling's are probably the most comparable since they're similar in size to Oak Creek, Stahoviak said.

In Hayden, compensation for the town manager position starts at $41,500 and tops out at $48,000. The Kremmling position starts at $40,000 and goes to $60,000.

Oak Creek trustees had thrown around the figure of $50,000 when they first began discussing salaries, but that was just a figure to start with.

County Commissioner Dan Ellison was Hayden's manager from 1984 to 1994. Though he was part time and was paid around $20,000 a year, the benefit of having him find available grant money to cover the cost of town projects and have the time to go after them paid for the position, he said.

"I paid for may salary 10 times over with the grants that I got," Ellison said.

Fellow County Commissioner Stahoviak agreed, and said that Oak Creek would have the benefit of getting grants that it otherwise couldn't go after because the town employees simply don't have the time.