After accusations of Good Old Boy politics flew around Mammoth over the hiring of Councilman John Eastman’s future

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Interim Town Manager Marianna Marysheva-Martinez took charge of controversy.

son-in-law at the airport, Town officials investigated and decided to start the hiring process for that job all over again.

New Interim Town Manager Marianna Marysheva-Martinez stepped in fast to handle this latest controversy in Mammoth – the hiring of Councilman John Eastman’s future son-in-law, Will Bauman, as Maintenance Coordinator at the Airport. While Martinez said the review of the situation “found no wrongdoing”, the Town will throw

out Bauman’s hiring and start all over from the job description, advertising and recruitment to hiring.

Members of the Mammoth public cried cronyism when they heard Airport Manager Bill Manning had hired the future son-in-law of his good friend, Councilman John Eastman. At the same time, a former airport employee pointed the finger at Manning for an alleged safety violation.

The Town Manager responded in very carefully chosen words which revealed as little as possible about the touchy situation. In fact, the manager seemed to take charge, telling Manning and Eastman not to comment. Thursday, the manager said in an email that “one of the areas that I have been charged to look closely into was personnel processes and policies. While my focus in the first few days on the job has been Town-wide, an attire recruitment qt the airport was a perfect place to start. Having looked into this particular recruitment closely,” said Ms. Martinez, “from start to finish, it became apparent that the Town lacks a centrally managed recruitment and selection process. We are going to change this,” she said, “and we will start with the airport, given that their recent recruitment has not yet been completed.”

When asked to elaborate on the failings of the Town personnel process, Martinez said that some time ago the Town Council had adopted general personnel rules but not a step by step process. She said this was true at the airport. They have no step by step instructions for hiring, so, she said, they came up with their own process.

Martinez confirmed that 48 applicants applied for the airport job. That field was narrowed to the top 8. She said all of those were interviewed but not all by the entire interview panel. . She said, “We didn’t really see any wrongdoing during this review process. It did show two finalists, one of whom was offered the job.”

Now, the manager and others will start from the ground floor by updating the airport job description for the $50,000 per year position, then recruit, advertise, review applicants and maintain scoring sheets. Asked about the make-up of the interview panel, Martinez said it would include the Town personnel co-ordinator, the Town attorney, at least two people from the public and others. She said that the department head, Bill Manning, would be involved at the end of the process.

For two days, Martinez, the Town Attorney and personnel co-ordinator conducted a review of the situation.

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