Firm To Conduct Top Cop Search Over Zoom, Take 3 – 4 Months

The city will pay a California-based search firm up to $50,850 to spend the next three to four months conducting online meetings and interviews as it helps New Haven find a new permanent police chief. 

That’s according to an application that the firm Ralph Andersen & Associates submitted to the city on Jan. 31 in response to the city’s request for proposals (RFP) for a new police chief search firm consultant. 

Mayor Justin Elicker confirmed and clarified those details in a Tuesday afternoon phone interview with the Independent. He said he signed a finalized version of the city-consultant contract earlier this afternoon. 

The newly inked deal comes several days after Elicker first announced on Friday that the city had picked Ralph Andersen & Associates to help find a new permanent replacement for Interim Police Chief Renee Dominguez. Ralph Andersen & Associates was the only firm to respond to the RFP.

Elicker told the Independent Tuesday that the newly signed contract states the city will pay the search firm no more than $50,850 for its work in helping find a new permanent replacement for Interim Chief Dominguez.

The search firm expects that process to take three to four months from the signing of the contract to the hiring of a new chief.

“I spoke with a number of entities that are recruiting firms to get feedback on how we should approach this process,” Elicker said Tuesday when asked about this timeline, ​“and they all underscored just how lengthy this process is. I am very anxious to get a permanent chief in place. But I think we need to do so in a way that ensures that we get the right person.”

Part of the search firm’s work will include hosting ​“two community engagement Zoom meetings” that will be open to the public, Elicker said.

Both of those meetings will take place online via Zoom. 

However, he added, the city will make available a ​“physical space” that New Haveners can come to and gather in in-person in order to participate together in those online meetings. 

Elicker said that the next step now that the contract has been signed is for the search firm and the city to send out a digital ​“community survey” as well as a separate survey for New Haven Police Department employees. Those surveys will start collecting input on what local police officers and community members would like to see out of the next police chief. 

Elicker said the city has not yet set the dates for the planned two community meetings.

The submission document that Ralph Andersen & Associates sent in on Jan. 31, meanwhile, sheds further light on how the California-based search firm plans to go about finding a new permanent replacement for Interim Chief Dominguez, as well as on how long the consultant expects that search to take. (Last December, the Board of Alders rejected then-Acting Chief Dominguez’s nomination to serve as permanent chief. Soon thereafter, Dominguez announced her plans to retire after the city finds a replacement.)

Click here to read that document in full.

Some of the details included in the search consultant firm proposal include:

• All of the work they plan to do over the course of this search process will be conducted online. ​“If selected to conduct this search engagement, kick-off activities, stakeholder meetings, resume review meetings, as well as all candidate interviews will be enabled using Zoom Video Technology,” Burg wrote in the application’s cover letter. ​“No on-site visits or meetings will be conducted unless restrictions are lifted during this process. We will move through the interview and selection stage expeditiously as the situation allows.”

The firm reiterates that all-virtual process in the ​“Pricing” section of the submission. ​“Ralph Andersen & Associates is leveraging cloud-based applications to operate in a total virtual environment. All meetings and interviews will be conducted by video (Zoom Technologies), all work products provided to the client will be electronically transmitted (properly organized and tabbed) using either DropBox or ShareFile.”

Elicker confirmed on Tuesday that the final, signed contract does not require the search firm consultant to come to New Haven to do any of their work in-person.

• The firm expects the whole process — from the city’s selection of a search firm to a new police chief actually starting work — to take between three and four months. ​“Ralph Andersen & Associates will complete the search within 75 to 90 days from the execution of the agreement to the presentation of candidates,” the application’s ​“Implementation Plan/Time Frame” section reads.

The timeline included in that section (which is presented as a photo at the top of this article) estimates that the search firm should need seven weeks to identify, screen and interview candidates. Overall, the timeline estimates it should take three months between when the search firm is selected and when a new police chief search is hired. The timeline then adds another month for when the new police chief should begin their work for the city.

Elicker said Tuesday that the timeline laid out in the contract is not different than the timeline laid out in the search firm’s submission.

• Some of the expenses to be covered by the city’s payment to the search firm — which, per the final deal, is no more than $50,850 — include ​“advertisements, consultant interaction (anticipated to be done 100% through videoconferencing), clerical, research, graphic design, verifications and Internet and Lexis/Nexis searches on the top two candidates, and longdistance telephone charges.” would charge the city an extra $1,800 per candidate for additional references conducted beyond the top candidate.

• If the police chief that the search firm finds ​“resigns or is dismissed for cause” within one year of their appointment, then Ralph Andersen & Associates ​“will conduct another search free of all charges for professional services. The City of New Haven would be expected to pay for the reimbursement of all incurred expenses.

“Should the initial outreach efforts not result in a successful placement, Ralph Andersen & Associates will continue the outreach efforts until the ideal candidate is found. The City will be responsible for expenses based on actual receipts.”

• In a ​“Recent Recruitments” section of the application, the search firm states that it recently helped find new police chiefs for municipal departments in Austin, Boise, Charlotte, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Kansas City, Oakland, Sacramento, and San Francisco, among other cities.

See below for Ralph Andersen & Associates’ full proposed work plan for the city’s police chief search.