Miki Mullor
Editor
Sammamish City Council unanimously selected Rick Rudometkin as its new City Manager and directed Interim City Manager Larry Patterson to enter contract negotiations.
Rudeometkin is currently County Manager of Eddy County, New Mexico. He is currently also a City Manager finalists at the Mill Creek and was previously County Manager finalists at Clark County.
Rudometkin serves as the County Manager of Eddy County, N.M., a position he has held since 2013. He was also the county’s Public Works Director in 2013.
Rudometkin served as the Streets Division Manager in Colorado Springs, Colo. (2012-13), and in multiple capacities in Modoc County, Calif. (2007-11), including Chief Administrative Officer (2009-11).
Both Eddy County and Modoc County are low population rural counties.
He served the City of Dana Point, Calif. (2003-07) as the Public Works Manager/Streets Manager, and worked for Willdan (private sector engineering) from 1994-2003.
Rudometkin holds a bachelor’s degree in business management from Woodbury University in Calif.
In a Council-Manager form of government, the city manager provides policy advice, directs the daily operations of city government, handles personnel functions (including the power to appoint and remove employees) and is responsible for preparing the city budget.
Under the council-manager statutes, the city council is prohibited from interfering with the manager’s administration. The city manager, however, is directly accountable to and can be removed by a majority vote of the council at any time.
The council-manager form is based on the model of a business with a board of directors that appoints a chief executive officer.
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Sammamish Comment 
I’m rather surprised at the pick. This man presented himself at the public reception as a manager of a small place with great oil revenue, if Im not mistaken. The council members I spoke with said they were looking for somone with finance experience…from what he said, that ain’t him. Very surprised at this unanimous pick.
I was also a bit surprised at his selection. It was plainly obvious that he desperately wanted to leave New Mexico and his grammar certainly needs improvement. In addition, I wonder how long he is going to stick around given his two years here, three years there work history.