Laura Philpott stepped up a few months ago to take the position of interim city manager for the city of Maple Valley when the former city manager quit.

Finding a new city manager was one more task the already busy City Council had to take on. They had two choices when picking a new city manager – they could either do a nationwide search to fill the position or keep the interim city manager.

When Philpot took the job as the interim city manager a few months ago, she said she was interested in the position permanently.

One of the topics on the agenda of the Sept. 12 Maple Valley City Council meeting was to talk about the position of the city manager. When 10:15 p.m. rolled around, the council still had some topics to discuss before it was time to discuss the city manager topic. Since the meeting was running a little later, Mayor Sean P. Kelly made a motion to move the topic of city manger to a special meeting on Sept. 19.

During the Sept. 19 meeting, the City Council held an executive session and then made a recommendation to make Philpot the permanent city manager when the meeting reconvened.

The council thanked Philpot for all of her hard work during the time as the interim city manger. Philpot thanked everyone for their support and is looking forward to keep serving the community.

“The big reason why she was chosen was because she has good experience,” Kelly said.

Aside from having good experience from working with Auburn and Sammamish, she has lived in Maple Valley for 14 years. She has a son that is in the Tahoma School District, which shows she is invested in the city. She has a lot of respect from the community and the staff really respects her, Kelly said.

Her customer service skills have always been great, which is important. If you were to email her, she would get back to you within a few hours, she shows she acknowledges everyone who reaches out to her, he said.

“Philpot was the best fit for the position,” Kelly said.

The next step is for the legal council to get involved and write up all of the legal documents to make it official, Kelly said. Their hope was to get that approved and done by the next city council meeting on Sept. 26, but since the council had to discuss the topic a week later than anticipated, the documents won’t be ready in time. Everything should be ready to go by the Oct. 10 meeting and the city council will vote to make her the permanent city manager and swear her in.