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The next city manager will be selected by a supermajority if the mayor has her way. 

Mayor Shirley Dean will propose a process at tonight’s council meeting for the selection of a top executive to replace City Manager Jim Keene, who is taking the city manager post in Tucson in August. 

In a document released Monday, Dean suggests that seven out of the nine members of the council should agree on the candidate. 

“This is to ensure that the broadest possible support is available to the candidate,” the mayor says in her proposal. 

In a phone interview, Dean conceded that the city charter says decisions are made by five votes and has no provisions for a two-thirds vote. However, she said she hopes the council will go along with the spirit of her proposal. 

“I would think that any city manager would turn down the job with a divided city council,” Dean said. 

The council will discuss Dean’s proposal as well as one to be presented by Councilmember Linda Maio. Maio’s recommendations were not available Monday. 

The mayor will also propose a process for the selection of an interim city manager, since the manager selection process is expected to take six months or longer. 

The council “will interview the candidate already selected for interview (at the closed council meeting June 13) regarding filling the city manager position on an interim bases,” she writs in her council report. 

Some speculate that person may be Deputy City Manager Weldon Rucker, whose candidacy Councilmember Dona Spring is championing. The mayor said she could not divulge the name of the individual who may be interviewed. The council will meet in closed session, perhaps as early as Wednesday, to make the decision, which will not be made public until the candidate and the council come to an agreement on remuneration, Dean said. 

Dean is proposing that at tonight’s meeting certain councilmembers be designated to negotiate the contract provisions with the person selected for interim manager. 

The bulk of the mayor’s proposal addresses the search for a new city manager. She says the search should be conducted by a national headhunter, chosen by the council. 

The firm would look for an individual whose profile would be created through interviews with all councilmembers, six senior staff members and six representatives of the employee unions. The full council would approve the final profile. 

Once the search is completed, a representative of the firm would meet in closed session with the council, sort through the candidates and create a short list of applicants. 

These five or six top candidates would then be interviewed by a community committee of nine or 10 members. The interviews would be “closed in order to protect the confidentiality of the candidates,” the mayor writes. When Keene and several other candidates were interviewed in Tucson by a citizens committee, the interviews were conducted on public TV, according to the local papers. 

The committee members would be appointed by the council as a whole in closed session. They would be designated “under a voluntary agreement among ourselves that a consensus of seven or more councilmembers would be needed to appoint each member of the committee,” the mayor writes. 

The community committee, which would meet only once or twice, should include representatives of the business community, the university community, neighborhoods, city employees and other groups as determined by the council, the mayor said. “The committee should represent the diversity of the city, but need not be confined to Berkeley residents.” 

Dean said committee members would not rank candidates, but would submit written comments to the council on each. 

The council would then interview candidates on the short list in closed session and make a selection. A contract would be negotiated by the same group that negotiated the contract with the interim city manager. 

Tonight’s City Council meeting begins at 7 p.m. and will be held in Council Chambers in Old City Hall, at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. The meeting will be broadcast over 89.3-FM, KPFB, and televised on Cable Channel 25, B-TV.