Portland officials will begin the search for a new city manager Wednesday in a process likely to spark robust debates about hiring locally vs. candidates “from away,” as well as the best personality for the person filling the city’s top administrative post.

City Council members are expected to create a four-member search committee and appoint Assistant City Manager Sheila Hill-Christian as acting city manager following Mark Rees’ decision to step down after three years. The city will likely launch a national search that Mayor Michael Brennan predicted would draw a “significant” number of applicants.

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Outgoing City Manager Mark Rees, left, has not served as Portland’s chief spokesperson since Michael Brennan, right, became the city’s first elected mayor in nearly 90 years. John Ewing/2014 Press Herald file

“I fully expect that we will retain a search firm to help with the process,” Brennan said.

Rees’ tenure as city manager coincided with a significant shift in governance that changed the structure and dynamics of City Hall, at times testing the balance of powers within.

As Portland’s first elected mayor in nearly 90 years, Brennan assumed a more active and visible role in setting the policy agenda for City Hall, while Rees kept a lower profile than his two predecessors, Robert Ganley and Joe Gray, as the manager of day-to-day affairs. Before the change, mayors were chosen each year by the council and filled a largely ceremonial role.

The manager, for example, no longer serves as the leading spokesperson for the city. And while the manager formerly answered to all nine city councilors on a relatively equal basis, Rees worked closely with the full-time mayor on a daily basis.

The change in the power dynamics at City Hall have occasionally produced public tensions, usually between Brennan and the other council members. Some councilors, for example, disliked Brennan’s committee assignments and his control of the City Council’s meeting agendas.

Rees never moved his permanent residence to Portland. And in what some considered a potential sign of unease within City Hall, councilors granted Rees a one-year contract extension earlier this year rather than a longer deal.

Rees notified councilors on Aug. 18 that he planned to step down on Sept. 3 “in order to pursue other opportunities, both professional and personal.”

Councilors were still mum last week about Rees’ decision but said they did not ask for his resignation. They also credited him for crafting several balanced budgets, implementing a capital improvement plan and filling top positions with strong administrators.

“Mark Rees stepped in during a time of transition,” said Councilor David Marshall. “Nobody knew how the new system . . . was going to work and he stepped up to the plate.”

Chris O’Neil, the Portland Community Chamber of Commerce’s liaison to City Hall, attributed Rees’ shorter tenure at least in part to lingering tensions over the 2010 charter changes that ushered in an elected mayor with more power.

The Chamber was a major proponent of the charter changes. In a 2009 white paper presented to the City Council, a Chamber working group said Portland “needs a popularly elected mayor who will be able to clearly articulate community goals, and who will have a political mandate from the community and the time to work with the city manager, the council and stakeholders to implement these goals.”

O’Neil said that Rees and Brennan delivered what citizens asked for: a mayor who set the agenda and led on political issues while the city manager ran the city. But Rees’ low-key nature may not have helped in that respect, he said.

“A lot of the people who were accustomed to the old system wanted a charismatic personality in that position,” O’Neil said.

In 2011, the city received 65 applications for the city manager position. The three finalists were acting Portland City Manager Patricia Finnigan and Rees, who was then serving as manager of North Andover, Mass., and a third manager from another Massachusetts town.

The field of candidates this time around is expected to be equally robust – if not larger – given Portland’s growing national reputation as a “foodie” city, lively cultural scene and easy access to the outdoors. But the debate has already begun about whether Portland should be looking nationally or closer to home for its next manager.

Orlando Delogu, a former city councilor and Planning Board member who still monitors city politics, is among those who hope local candidates will be strongly considered for the job.

“We in Portland suffer from the belief that people from away know more than we do . . . and they will bring insights and other benefits,” said Delogu, a professor emeritus at the University of Maine School of Law. “I have come to believe that – whether in state government or city government – is an overvalued virtue.”

Marshall said while he believes it is “always healthy” to conduct a national search, he also believes there are strong local candidates, including the soon-to-be acting manager Sheila Hill-Christian. Councilor Ed Suslovic, who is expected to serve on the search committee, said he does not believe the council should give any preference to either internal or external candidates.

“I think the best thing we can do is try to (attract) candidates externally and internally,” Suslovic said. “I think Portland has a lot to offer. We are not a city in crisis. We are a city on the move.”

Portland currently pays the city manager roughly $146,600 annually, just shy of the $148,000 median salary paid in 2011 to similar “chief appointed officials” in communities with populations between 50,000 and 99,999 residents, according to data supplied by the trade group the International City/County Management Association.

Rees’ resignation also raises another question: Whether to fill a slew of other top-level vacancies within City Hall.

The city is at various stages in the searches for directors of three departments: finance, human resources, and health and human services. Also, the director of Portland’s largest homeless shelter – an important position in a city facing a growing demand for shelter space – left in July. And the city attorney who has taken on a higher-profile role enforcing the city’s nuisance ordinances, Trish McAllister, recently said that she will be leaving the city’s service.

Brennan said councilors had not yet decided whether to fill the three department heads or postpone the searches until a new city manager is in place.

“I think there are good arguments for both sides,” Brennan said. “All three of those are key positions and allowing them to stay vacant for a period of time could create some challenges. At the same time, the new city manager may want to hire their own team, so there’s an argument for that.”

Suslovic said he personally supports allowing the acting city manager to proceed with the search processes. “We can’t sit around and wait to fill those positions,” Suslovic said.

The City Council will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday at City Hall.

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