Wells Mayor Dave Jacobson

The Wells City Council is getting closer to hiring a new administrator, narrowing the choices to one name.

After interviewing three candidates on Aug. 9, the top choice is Jeremy Germann of Aberdeen, Ohio. Germann is the village administrator in Aberdeen.

The other two who were interviewed were Wells Community Development Director Zoa Heckman, and Kiester City Clerk Kari Jacobson.

Heckman and Jacobson were interviewed in person, while Germann had a telephone interview with the council.

According to Mayor Dave Jacobson, the council is working on arrangements to fly Germann to Wells, so he can look over the community, and they can work out contract details with him.

“He is trying to arrange a flight here over the Labor Day weekend,” Jacobson says.

After the face-to-face meeting and negotiating a contract, the council will take a final vote to hire Germann at their next meeting, explains Jacobson.

For Heckman, this was her second time being interviewed as a finalist. After previously narrowing the field to two persons – Heckman and Canby administrator Diane Miller – the council decided against hiring either one and to start the process all over.

“It’s never as easy as we would hope,” Jacobson says about getting an administrator hired. After reviewing all of the applications, the full council narrowed the field to five persons to interview. Two of those removed their names from consideration before the interviews could take place – one of them cancelling on the day of the interviews.

Jacobson says he lost track of the total number of applicants, but adds that it was substantial.

“We got two more yesterday,” he says. “The ads say the position is open until filled. I’d say a lot of people want this job.”

Germann has been the village administrator in Aberdeen since April 2007. He is also an adjunct professor at Southern State Community College in Hillsboro, Ohio.

From May through December in 2007 he was in the Peace Corps in Bucharest, Romania.

He attended college at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and got his Masters of Public Administration at Northern Kentucky University in 2005.

He served as an editor at publications in Maysville, Ky., from November 2003 to May 2006.