Feb. 29—FAIRMONT — Although Travis Blosser’s nomination was near unanimous among Fairmont City Council, one council member dissented at the choice.

“I’m not saying that Mr. Blosser won’t do a good job for Fairmont, but I felt as for me, as a representative of the city of Fairmont. I was voted in to make the best decision on the most qualified candidate for the city of Fairmont,” Deputy Mayor Josh Rice said. “And he wasn’t it for me.”

Blosser’s nomination proved controversial among members of the public, so much so that city attorney Kevin Sansalone came prepared Tuesday night to defend the process by which Blosser was picked to be the city’s future manager. Despite rumblings from the public, Council for the most part was united behind their choice.

The primary criticism leveled against Blosser is his lack of advanced degrees and when compared against one other finalist, less experience. Rice said one of the primary factors that influenced his opinion was evaluating the budget sizes Blosser and the other lead candidate were responsible for managing.

“The other candidate ran a 20-some million dollar budget for 14 years, in the past for so many years,” Rice said. “Mr. Blosser was at a $1 million budget at the Municipal League. So I just took my black and white of how I felt — that’s how I felt and I came up with my no vote.”

Rice also said the other candidate had 15 years of experience as a city manager, compared to Blosser’s one year and three months as assistant city manager of Shinnston and subsequent nine months as city manager of Shinnston. Blosser also served as city manager of Weirton for three years, before working as deputy executive director and then executive director of the West Virginia Municipal League for a combined 5 years. Blosser’s experience is available on his LinkedIn page. Blosser was also a Fairmont council member in 2013.

Shawna Santee, of Fairmont, who accused the council of violating the open meetings act on Tuesday night, was dismayed by the choice.

“We’ve let a highly qualified, overeducated candidate go in lieu of one that has a high school diploma and less experience,” she said.

However, Rice explained that council wanted to avoid excluding applications with requisite real world experience simply because they lacked a university degree to formalize their experience. Council changed their requirements for the job in order to broaden the field.

That said, opening the field was only the first phase of the selection process. Council still had to pick who they believed was the best candidate for the job. Rice felt that Blosser’s experience was insufficient compared to the experience brought by the next leading candidate, which ultimately led to the no vote.

Council member Rebecca Moran disagreed.

“He had done his homework,” Moran said. “He watched our past council meetings, he reviewed our last published budget, he knew about all of the plans that we had for the rail trail, for Norwood Park. So he’d really done his homework on those things.”

Moran said Blosser’s experience working as executive director of the municipal League provided opportunities to encounter how other cities did things and solved problems on a frequent basis, in a way acting like a skill multiplier. Part of his duties at the Municipal League included dealing with the state legislature, which provided him with a deep understanding of state law that every municipality has to work under.

It also afforded him the opportunity to learn what resources are available for cities to take advantage of. Although Blosser might not have the same length of experience as the leading other candidate, he makes up for it in terms of variety.

“He has experience in DC and knows how to gain support for small towns and help us meet our budget, if we want to look at things like Congressionally Directed Spending, which we saw a fair amount on the agenda for last night,” Moran said. “That’s something Fairmont has never looked into and he already has background and knowledge and is skilled at that.”

Mayor Anne Bolyard also defended his qualifications. She said all candidates were reviewed by the city’s director of human resources and council to ensure their applications met the requirements. Had Blosser not met the requirements, he would not have been considered for city manager.

Council member Gia Deasy revealed the selection process included one key structural element that helped guide council in their decision making.

“We had a set of criteria, we filled out a rubric that kept us as objective as possible,” Deasy said. “And according to that rubric, he had the most points.”

Although candidate experience was important, the rubric sought to break experience down from a single factor into smaller components that made it possible to evaluate the strengths that come from holding different types of experience. This allowed council to take in a more holistic view of each candidate. In the end, Blosser and the other leading candidate were very, very close on the metrics established by the rubric but Blosser ultimately came out ahead.

For his part, Blosser appears to be ready to apply what he’s learned in his time away from Fairmont to the role of city manager.

“This really is an opportunity to come home and to take the experiences from the things I’ve learned about municipal government — specifically West Virginia municipal government — and apply it to Fairmont,” Blosser said in a city press release. “I like to think of myself as someone who breaks down silos. I have a knack for not just wanting to put things on paper, but actually executing them and taking them across the finish line. Fairmont has some amazing projects that we can really push across the finish line.”

Among those tasks will be regaining the trust of residents like Santee who were alienated by the lack of a public forum with the finalists.

“It would have been better for everybody,” Santee said, referring to the decision to withhold information about the finalists. “It would have been better for Mr. Blosser. It would have been better for everyone that lives here. It would have been better for Council and it would have been better for staff if it were made more public.”

Reach Esteban at efernandez@timeswv.com