Steamboat Pilot & Today

Oak Creek — Raywood C. Leibensperger Jr. will be asked to travel to Oak Creek to do a face-to-face interview with the town manager hiring committee this week. If all goes well, the town will negotiate a contract and offer him a job.

Leibensperger was chosen from a field of three. He lives in Florida and the committee agreed to do a phone interview with him at the first of the month.

Now, the committee wants to interview him face to face because he could be the man for the job.

Initially, five applicants were chosen from a field of nine for the position.

Two of the five finalists bowed out of the running because they wanted to get paid more, Oak Creek Mayor Deb Van Gundy said.

Leibensperger's resume states he has nine years of experience as the city clerk and treasurer for Lake Helen, Fla., a town of 2,700 people.

At that job, Leibensperger was responsible for overseeing 24 full- and part-time employees, prepared annual budgets for the city and managed city investments.

County Commissioner Nancy Stahoviak was on the hiring committee. She said Leibensperger's responsibilities for Lake Helen were more like a town manager than a clerk.

Leibensperger's resume also shows 25 years of management history in retail stores, and shows he was the manager of the public works department in Longwood, Fla., between 1971 and 1975.

He served as a city commissioner for Longwood in the '70s and the early '80s and was a member in the Navy as a radarman between 1962 and 1965.

Besides his resume showing him to be the most accomplished of the three interviewed, Van Gundy said the committee liked his attitude during the phone interview, which lasted an hour and a half.

If he takes the job, town trustees decided last month that the manager can live anywhere in the county that is affordable or to which that person is suited.

"But we made it clear that we would like for him to stay in south Routt," Van Gundy said.

If it all works out, Oak Creek could have a town manager in as soon as three weeks, Van Gundy said.