FAIRMONT– As Fairmont’s interim city administrator, Jeff O’Neill, will soon end his role with the city on Nov. 23, the Fairmont City Council on Monday talked about a transition plan. O’Neill has been serving as interim city administrator since November of 2024.

This past fall the council had received a good number of applications for the city administrator position and had decided to interview five. Of the five interviewed, it expressed interested in doing second interviews with three candidates. However, all three ultimately withdrew from being further considered, leaving the council with no prospects.

At the last council meeting O’Neill had been asked to contact potential interim administrator candidates off of a list provided by the League of Minnesota Cities.

“I was not able to get anyone super interested in the position,” O’Neill said on Monday. “The distance was really kind of a factor.”

O’Neill also added, “The reputation of the community as being a relatively difficult place to work I think is out there with the administrator community.”

He said he did he best to highlight that Fairmont it still a great community and has great staff. O’Neill said he thinks he convinced a few people to at least consider the position.

“Hope is not lost. I don’t want to make promises yet but we have another candidate that’s expressed interest,” O’Neill said.

In the meantime, in lieu of an interim or full-time city administrator, the council also on Monday approved a motion to authorize the finance director, Paul Hoye, to assume the city administrator signatory authority until an interim city administrator is appointed or the city administrator position is filled.

O’Neill did say that staff has been working on a priority distribution and duties plan which outlines many of the current projects happening in the city, including Community Development projects as the director of that division, Pat Oman, also left his role with the city this week.

“If you don’t have a city administrator and you don’t have a community development director, what’s going to happen with all of these initiatives we’ve got going?” O’Neill said.

However, he said that staff has been engaged and knows what the high and low priorities are and what can be put on hold.

On the topic of a lack of a city administrator or any strong prospects, the council also considered a code of conduct and city staff standards of engagement.

O’Neill pointed out that this was something that council had asked for earlier in the year but hadn’t been worked on until recently.

“I did some research with the League of Minnesota Cities, found different code of conduct documents and started working on an outline and development of some language that might work for Fairmont,” O’Neill said.

Likewise, he did some research on documents and guidelines that might work for city staff and gave both outlines to city attorney Flaherty and Hood for refinement.

Since then, O’Neill said he’s gotten some feedback and gave updated versions to the council. He acknowledged that both documents were a lot to absorb.

“This is to me a good starting point and represents a good faith effort of everyone involved to come up with some standards and rules of behavior and conduct that we can all agree on that we want to achieve,” O’Neill said.

Ultimately the council tabled approving the code of conduct and city staff standards of engagement in order to further look into both.

In other business:

–After a presentation on the layout of the Blue Earth Avenue project, the council approved the final designs and authorized engineering firm Bolton & Menk to proceed with preparing the final project documents.

— Marty Seifert, a lobbyist with the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities, provided a general overview of the 2025 Minnesota Legislative Session, which concluded in May of 2025.

— Nov. 13, 2025 was proclaimed as Community Education and Recreation Day in the city of Fairmont.

— The council denied a request for a streetlight installation on Martin Court as it conflicts with the city’s current streetlight policy.

— The council approved a demolition grant to raze the commercial building at 1524 Albion Avenue.