{"id":24092,"date":"2025-01-08T23:48:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-09T06:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-city-manager-is-one-of-four-finalists-for-position-in-fruita\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:48:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:48:17","slug":"cortez-city-manager-is-one-of-four-finalists-for-position-in-fruita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-city-manager-is-one-of-four-finalists-for-position-in-fruita\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez city manager is one of four finalists for position in Fruita"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=f04eb4a7-4268-5501-93c0-6b934f9c0cfa&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"300\" height=\"344\" alt=\"Cortez City Manager Drew Sanders. (Courtesy city of Cortez)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Cortez City Manager Drew Sanders. (Courtesy city of Cortez)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>Forty-three people applied for Fruita\u2019s city manager position, and Cortez City Manager Drew Sanders is one of four finalists.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do want to be clear with the community that he is not being pushed out nor does he want to necessarily leave,\u201d said Cortez Mayor Rachel Medina. \u201cHe loves Cortez.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Medina said that Fruita \u201cwould be a good place for him and his family, especially for his wife\u2019s work, so he\u2019s jumping at the opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since 2021, Sanders has been in his position as Cortez city manager. Before that, he was chief of police at the department in Page, Arizona, from 2019 to 2021.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a meet-and-greet event at the Fruita Community Center on Thursday, Jan. 9, from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. for people to meet the candidates and offer feedback to the Fruita City Council, as the council makes the hiring decision, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fruita.org\/citymanager\/page\/city-fruita-announces-city-manager-finalists\" id=\"link-8fdcf1d2853d2255f1d15758d97943b6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a news release<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe position is extremely competitive right now, so there\u2019s no guarantee that Drew will get it,\u201d said Medina. \u201cBut I do think he would do a fantastic job no matter where he goes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The other three finalists are:<\/p>\n<div class=\"naviga-element naviga-x-im-unordered-list\">Jay Harrington, county manager for Routt County, Colorado, since 2021. Keith Rinehart, director of Community and Economic Development for Saginaw, Texas, since 2020. Shannon Vassen, who serves as Fruita\u2019s interim city manager now, and was the city\u2019s assistant city manager since 2023. <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>hiring for its city manager position<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,1429,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-cortez-city-council","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78397,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24092\/revisions\/78397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24092"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}