La Grande residents can talk with the city manager finalists June 11, 2025, at La Grande City Hall. (The Observer, File)

LA GRANDE — Community members packed La Grande City Hall after hours Wednesday, June 11, eager to chat with the four finalists vying to be the next city manager.

John Craig, Richard Huebner, John O’Brien and Stu Spence mingled with the crowd, answering questions and giving residents the opportunity to learn more about who their next city manager might be.

The Observer asked each candidate the same questions. What follows is an excerpt of that conversation, edited for length and clarity.

John Craig

Most recent occupation: Deputy county manager for Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Past two positions: Director of general services for the city for Albuquerque, New Mexico, and assistant county administrator for Mono County, California.

What drew you to the position? 

I’ve been in this career a long time — 25 years. At this point I can really pick and choose the type of locations where I want to apply and possible work. I’ve sort of centered my search on Oregon and Washington — the Pacific Northwest — because it’s a great quality of life. It’s good people. Our son just started school at (University of Oregon) and so he’s just finished his first year there.

It’s a great opportunity to come in and live here. And when I saw La Grande advertised, I did research. I read about the history of it. I read the brochure. I went and researched the city councilors and how long they’ve been here. It just seemed like a great community.

It’s a regional hub, so the whole county and several counties come here for their business. It seems like it’s great people. It just seems like a perfect place for me to use my experience to help make the community better.

What sets you apart from the other finalists? 

I’d say, probably my experience. I’ve lived in cities as small as 9,000. City manager. I’ve been a county manager for a 40,000 size county. Been a deputy city manager in 100,000, a deputy county manager in the mountains of California.

I’ve done a lot of different things. So, I think that experience that I have really sets me apart because I’ve seen a lot of different things. A lot of those things won’t transfer to La Grande, but it’s allowed me to think of new ways of addressing issues. Maybe nontraditionally things that we haven’t done in the past.

So, I think my experience … really specifically in local government. I’ve got my master’s degree in public administration — Columbia University. That experience only helps in the way you address problems. It’s thinking about things in a different way, perhaps, and allowing for new possibilities. In addition to the way that we currently do things.

I always say — my first day on the job, I’m the newest person here. You all know more than me. And so let’s work together to make the place that we live a better place.

With La Grande’s council-manager style of government, what would your priorities be?

Obviously, the priorities are set by the council. They set policy — they’ve got a great policy document they work with the city manager on and published, so I’ve reviewed that.

The role of a city manager is to run the day-to-day operations. We answer to the policy makers, who are elected by the citizens and so they answer to the citizens and therefore we answer to the citizens. I’ve only worked in locations with a manager-council form of government, so I understand how that works. I understand that I work for a group of individuals and they set the policy and we got and execute it.

I try not to get involved in their decision making. The hardest part of my job is learning about an issue — spending eight, 10, 15 hours learning about an issue and then I have three minutes to explain that to the council so that they can understand the issue enough to make a decision.

It’s very difficult job. I’ve been able to refine that over my career. I can answer whatever questions are asked about that topic because I do my research and understand it. My job is to help out the elected council to set the policy for the city and move forward.

What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the city of La Grande?

I think, like all smaller cities, finances is something that’s very important. The philosophy of financing a city is much like a family. We bring in revenues through our job to spend the money on thing that we choose to spend the money on. Same thing for a city.

We can only spend the money that we have and bring in. I think working with the financial arms to make sure that we have enough revenues to do the thing that we want to do. Whether that be through grants, sales taxes, user fees, whatever it may be.

Whatever those revenues are — let’s spend those monies to make the place that we live in a better place. We don’t make those decisions. The council makes those decisions and they’re formed by the public on what they want to spend the money on.

So, financials I think would be a very tough issue for here.

I think economic development and growing more business would be very important because that brings in more revenue. The urban growth area is something you’ve got to work on and make sure that’s running well. It’s obviously bringing in a lot of money each year and so investing that back into downtown is something that’s been done for a long time.

I think it’s a really nice place right now. People live here for a reason and we just want to continue doing that. I’ve had a lot of experience addressing different problems and issues. There are no obstacles here that are too big to overcome.

Anything else you’d like the public to know?

I’m envious of them for living here in La Grande, Oregon, because it seems like such a great place and I’m hopeful to be able to join them.

Richard “Rich” Huebner

Most recent occupation: City administrator for the city of Selah, Washington.

Past two positions: Assistant city manager for the city of Moses Lake, Washington, and management analyst for the city of Monroe, Washington.

What drew you to the position? 

I grew up in Eastern Washington — in the Yakima Valley — and lived in Western Washington for about 10 years. Came back to Eastern Washington and, you know, I’m drawn to the slower pace of life. I’m drawn to the four seasons.

I have a mentor in the profession in Washington state who’s really encouraged me to look into the council-manager form of government. And so the position itself, the form of government. It is a different state, but it’s very close in proximity to my home and my family and very similarly set up geography and personality.

I was drawn to the position both for the position itself and for the community.

What sets you apart from the other finalists? 

One of the other gentlemen spoke this evening about the quality of the candidates that are here and I genuinely, full heartedly agree with it. I think La Grande would be well served by any others.

What sets me apart? I’ve been in government for a little less than 10 years, so I don’t come in with a lot of preconceptions. I have enough experience I think to very effectively lead this organization, but my focus, again, as I mentioned a few times, will be learning from the community. I don’t know if it sets me apart from them, but one of my skill sets is being able to communicate effectively — not only with the council and with staff, but with the community.

I’m experienced enough, I think, to be a very strong and effective leader for the organization. I’m inexperienced enough to want to hear from the community, rather than me coming in and saying we’re going to do a,b,c. I think I’m a middle ground.

With La Grande’s council-manager style of government, what would your priorities be?

You know, one of the things that I’ve heard in conversation this evening is budgetary concerns that the city has been operating in a deficit for several years. Trying to reign in the deficit and preferably to balance the budget.

That’s easier said than done. In municipal government revenues in the last several years have been outspaced by expenditure increases. So that’s very difficult to do without impacting service levels or raising taxes and fees, which nobody wants. So, trying to balance the budget is going to be very high in that priority.

I don’t like to come into a community and say ‘Oh, we’ve got to do a, b and c.’ I like to hear from the community what their priorities are and also, with the position of city manager, the seven folks that sit up here — they set the policy. The analogy I use — and it’s the only time I will ever describe myself in athletic terms — the analogy I use is they’re the play callers. They’re the offense coordinator. They call the play. It’s my role and through me, the city staff, to execute the play.

So that’s the other thing. That’s going to be one of my questions tomorrow. Council, what are your priorities? What are your concerns? What do you want my focus to be day one?

So aside from wanting to balance the budget, my priority is going to be learning what the concerns and the priorities of the community are — rather than coming in and saying we need to do this for you.

What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the city of La Grande?

I’ve talked to a few of the department heads tonight — retention of good staff and being able to recruit staff throughout the organization, being able to pay a competitive salary while trying to balance that budget.

So many things in leading a government agency comes down to the budget. So, really trying to not only balance it, but make sure that it’s reflective of the needs of the city, the organization and also the community and what the residents are seeking from their government.

I don’t want to say we’re going to build three new parks if that community says we don’t need new parks, we need more police. So again, not to sound a cop out, but I really want to learn from the community what their priorities are and then figure out how to pay for those without racking up a deficit to do so.

Anything else you’d like the public to know?

I’m really excited by the opportunity. La Grande is a great community. It reminds me very much of a city not far from where I live — Ellensburg, Washington. It’s a city of about 20,000 with Central Washington University.

It’s a small college town, but with great pride in their identity. That’s what I’ve really heard and felt here this evening. So, I’m drawn to the position, as I mentioned earlier, not just for the role, but for the community. And I’m really excited by the possibility of being the next city manager here.

John O’Brien

Most recent occupation: Chief of staff for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Walla Walla.

Past two positions: Deputy to the garrison commander at Picatinny Arsenal and director of operations and stationing at U.S. Army Garrison Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany.

What drew you to the position? 

There was a couple of things that drove me towards looking at city management. When I started looking for city manager jobs, this was literally one of the first ones that popped up and it felt like it was kind of meant to be for us. As soon as I pointed out to (my wife) that they were looking, she was immediately excited and encouraged. So, it just made sense and it fit.

What sets you apart from the other finalists?

I have 22 years plus of experience in managing complex operations. So having been able to do that in a different venue than the city’s used to gives me the opportunity to bring a different perspective in a different look. While at the same time enough of similar skill sets that makes it so that the learning curve will be lower.

So I think I can be high value pretty rapidly even though there’s obviously going to be things I still need to learn.

With La Grande’s council-manager style of government, what would your priorities be?

Well I can say the first thing I need to do is get to know the community in which I’m working, as well as the people that I’ll be working with most often — especially the council members. If we wait until there’s a crisis that’s occurring for me to be able to figure out what people’s true tendencies are in communication then we’re probably going to fail.

So, day one is starting to get to know people. Over the next 90 days to six months, I would probably be doing what I would call a listening tour — going around and talking to not just simply the council members, but also the different directors and personnel within their sections. As well as the different committees and commissions that we have within the city.

Then going further out and trying to just simply meet people and talk to them. Not as a politician, but just simply so I can understand what the general pulse of the community is. So, that when I come to a point in time where I need to make recommendations, I’m doing so from an informed perspective.

What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the city of La Grande? 

So, I can answer that question from what I’ve read online in regards to what the city says their priorities are. So, based on those priorities, I would say that’s what the biggest concerns and challenges are.

One of the things I see is that the city has put some incentives out there in order to be able to encourage various different revitalization and construction efforts. So far, there’s nobody that’s been picking up on those efforts. So, I think what we need to do is take a hard look at those programs, find out why people aren’t picking up on it and see what we can do to improve them. One way ir another, we’ve got to find that method, so we can align what we’re offering as incentive with community needs with city priorities.

Once we get all three of those lined up, well then we’re going to see some growth.

Anything else you’d like the public to know?

I would say that I’m a spiritual person. I’m a believer and in that truth, I try to make sure that my efforts are always guided by those values and those beliefs.

I think within that, my desire and intention is to make sure that I’m not just simply transparent, but I’m also trustworthy. I realize you build trust through transparency, but I don’t want to just simply be transparent. I want to build real trust.

Stu Spence

Most recent occupation: La Grande Parks and Recreation director.

Past two positions: Recreation services manager for the city of Woodburn and youth programs coordinator for the city of Ellensburg.

What drew you to the position? 

So about two or three years ago, I told Robert Strope that I was interested in his position when he retired. So we began a series of mentor sessions over time and I learned more and more about the position. After that, I just became more and more attracted to it and passionate about doing what’s best for the community.

The reality is my kids have been raised here and I want the best for the community, so I’m just really passionate about it. It’s outside my comfort zone, but the desire for a better community overrode all that.

So, for me, it’s like ‘hey, why not me?’ That’s my attitude. And I think my track record is shown. We’ve got a lot done.

So all that being said, I’ve been interested in this for a while and I’ve been building towards this. When the time came, I wavered for a little, but I was like nope, it’s still the same reason — the make sure our community’s in the right place moving forward.

What sets you apart from the other finalists?

The easiest version, of course, is my existing relationship and partnerships that I have in the community. I’m embedded. I’m invested. I do this for a living already. Out of everybody in the room, I’d say 99% of the people I know. Because those are the movers and shakers that make decisions in the community. I’m in that circle already.

So, that’s the obvious answer. I think a different nuance would be that I’m fresh and I’m new. I don’t have experience as a city manager or any kind of military service commander. So, for me, it provides me with a clean slate.

That sets me apart as well — where I can listen, learn and move forward with a core group of directors.

With La Grande’s council-manager style of government, what would your priorities be?

I think economic development is key. And budget outlook. The city manager priorities that are in place right now are still going to be priorities next year. I can’t see the council changing that.

I think revenue generation is a constant struggle. I think balancing the budget is a priority. Yeah, economic development is a piece of that. I think vibrant parks and libraries and police and fire services are all necessary. So, I think it’s a matter of how do you blend all those things together. Prioritize with the council and work collaboratively to make that work.

What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the city of La Grande? 

I think one of our biggest struggles is attracting and retaining employees. I think that attracting and retaining businesses. With the changes since COVID, the inflation rates in our small town, we’re limited in what we can do. Not only by state legislation, but also local — even land use, even land availability.

The business park is an opportunity that we have, but it’s limited. We have limited property that’s developable. So all those are big challenges for us moving forward.

Anything else you’d like the public to know?

I’m passionate. I’m taking this process very seriously. And there’s no doubt that I want what’s best for this community moving forward.