SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
MERCEDES, TX — City officials announced Tuesday that Mercedes has retained Altiva Management Group of Edinburg to conduct the search for its next city manager, an ambitious undertaking in which the recruiting firm will attempt to locate, within the entire state of Texas, a person willing to remain in Mercedes.
“We want the best city managers in Texas to take a hard look at Mercedes, run the numbers, build the relationships, and stay,” said Mayor Oscar D. Montoya Sr., adding that the fourth item on that list had emerged as the primary screening criterion after extensive reflection on recent history.
The position oversees 163 employees, 17,915 residents, and a $29.6 million budget, plus an inheritance package that includes ongoing drainage work, $42.8 million in water and wastewater projects, more than $4 million in street upgrades, more than $1.7 million in parks and facilities, and $53 million in shops — a final figure that several commission members confirmed they had repeated aloud several times, slowly, to make sure it was real.
Altiva sources confirmed the firm has already developed a proprietary “stay interview,” in which candidates are asked hypothetical questions such as “It is March. A commissioner has called you four times before 8 a.m. about a drainage pond. What do you do?” with any answer containing a resignation letter constituting an automatic disqualification.
“We’re also administering a commitment exercise where the applicant must sit in the Interstate 2 retail center parking lot for six hours without once checking Zillow for homes in McAllen,” said one recruiter. “You’d be surprised how many finalists we lose at hour two.”
To demonstrate institutional seriousness about the staying requirement, the city has scheduled the staying to begin in late February, following a November 13 application deadline and January interviews — a four-month runway officials described as “a rehearsal period in which the candidate practices not leaving before we even hire them.”
“Really, the search itself is the first test,” Montoya said. “If they’re still answering our emails in January, that’s a very encouraging sign. If they’re still here in March, we may commission a plaque.”
At press time, Altiva had reportedly received several strong applications, all of which were immediately forwarded to the retention desk, where analysts were calculating exactly how many months each candidate could be expected to remain before discovering what the drainage projects entail.
