Thank you for visiting
I’m John Honeycutt. Following my application for Sallisaw’s City Manager position, I launched this website on Sept 12, 2024. I found this description helpful. An Executive Search (Jul 8) was approved to identify prospective candidates for the position. Since September, I have been working toward a deeper understanding of Sallisaw’s needs and direction. Throughout September until now (Nov 20), I have learned a lot and met dozens of new people along the way.
I submitted several documents with my application. The most significant are these three:
Please consider contacting your City Council representative or our Mayor if you feel my background and experiences would serve you well in this role: Ernie Martens (Mayor), Kenny Moody (Ward 1), Josh Bailey (Ward 2), Julian Mendiola (Ward 3), and Brad Hamilton (Ward 4). Thank you in advance.
Background and History
Sallisaw’s City Manager vacated the position in June 2024. The Sallisaw City Manager position is not political or elected. Rather, Sallisaw’s Board of Commissioners selects a person for the role. Four commissioners take a vote. If there is a tie vote, Sallisaw’s mayor breaks the tie.
When the previous Sallisaw City Manager resigned, a search to replace him began immediately. Oklahoma Municipal Management Services (OMMS) received seventeen applications on behalf of the city. Some of the applications resulted from an executive search firm’s efforts. Others (like mine) resulted from being made aware of the open position and applying for the job in a traditional sense.
The names of the applicants are confidential. By launching this website, I intentionally want my interest in the role to be known.
The search firm did not identify me as a candidate. Also, I am not an obvious choice for the role without an explanation of my “fit“.” This website intends to convey my interest and offer evidence of my qualifications.
I received confirmation of my application for Sallisaw City Manager on Friday, Sept. 13. Major milestones (for me) since then include the following:
1. Budget and Financial Analysis
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- Reviewing of the FY 2025 Budget
- Comparisons of four prior year’s budgets
- Analyzed compensation for all employees, including historical wages
- Identified compensation bands
- Reviewed all available job descriptions and identified gaps
- Discussed specific grant opportunities presently unrealized
2. Community Engagement and Observations
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- First-hand observations of construction underway
- Experiences of Sallisaw’s Nutrition Center
- Attendance at City Council meetings
- Discussions with neighborhood associations
- Discussions with residents with outstanding city requests
- Discussions with residents from each ward
- Explored and experienced our parks
3. Research and Strategic Planning
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- Research regarding the city’s electric power provider
- Discussions with Ki Bois and KATS
- Divised plans for “Connect and Flow” street vision
- Identified possibilities for leveraging rail access
- Identified and discussed Ward 3 walkability improvements
- Researched safety and crime in city subsections
- Researched peer-reviewed scholarly works for cities
- Extensive reading on City Manager leading practices
- Identified specific organizational improvement opportunities
- Cursorly reviewed technology capabilities
- Attended required training for new city leaders (OMMS)
- Continually added pages and thinking to this website
4. Discussions with Sallisaw departments
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- Administration
- Building development
- Cemetery
- Customer Service
- Electric
- Library
- Police
- Sanitation/landfill
- Water treatment
November
The Reason for applying
You and your family might have been in the Sallisaw area for quite a while. Many have grown up here and raised a new generation. My grandfather was born in 1878. He grew potatoes near Akins, and my dad sold them downtown. Both parents graduated from Central.
My wife (Jennifer) and I moved here from an oil and cattle city in Colorado about seven years ago. We like the seasons here. We also appreciate being near nature, the cost of living, and many good-hearted people. So, we stayed. I’m glad we did.
I expect more families and individuals will be located here. Long-timers and newcomers deserve a city that serves their needs.
People expect and deserve to have confidence in each other and trust in the services of their city and its leaders–including their city manager.
My sense is that some of Sallisaw’s confidence has recently waivered. I want to help reinstill some of that confidence and emphasize its promise. My description of our city – what it could be and how we could achieve it appears on a separate pages.
John Honeycutt
Sallisaw City Manager Applicant
For Your Information
My management approach varies depending on the situation. For example, ongoing processes and functions are managed differently than large projects, and changes come in several forms.
I call these changes imperative, suspect, compliance, and provocative.
An Example (6 mins)
Some changes have to be done. There are two categories of these: compliance change and imperative change. Compliance changes, such as a new Oklahoma law, are necessary for the smooth functioning of the system. Imperative changes, like those following a disaster or crafting a disaster recovery plan before one strikes, are urgent and cannot be delayed.
The most common change, though, that can be controversial, I call these provocative changes. These require a great deal of communication and objective reasoning. I have successfully used several leading practices spanning four decades. These have proven to be crucial in managing such changes.
Crucial practices include:
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- An ethical workforce, culture of trust, and collaborative spirit
- Authentic engagement with stakeholder groups
- Empowering staff with continuous improvement philosophy
- Exceptional communication and transparency
- Exceptional project management discipline
- Financial prudence, planning, and process-focused
- Prioritizing based on principles not organizational politics
- Placing the right people in the right position
- Retain processes that work well, but challenge the status quo
- Using performance-based and merit-based HR processes
I am confident I can duplicate my previous successes as Sallisaw’s City Manager.
An existing website HoneycuttScience.com describes the Natural Sciences and Social Science (Psychology). Both of these disciplines support the role of a City Manager one their daily routines, but especially with projects and initiatives that require scientific application to the work at hand.
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