ADRIAN — After narrowing the field to five finalists, the Adrian City Commission voted unanimously on Aug. 18 to offer the position of city administrator to Chad Baugh, currently the director of police services for Canton Township.

The decision followed an afternoon of 45-minute interviews with all five finalists, an open house where the candidates could have conversations with members of the public, video interviews in which the candidates replied to written questions, questionnaires that were filled out by all of the applicants, and reviewing the results of a social media screening done by consulting firm Yeo & Yeo. Commissioners also received feedback from city staff.

For many commissioners, the choice came down to two favorites, Baugh and Elle Cole.

“They just bring different strengths to the table and that is what we have to figure out,” Mayor Angela Sword Heath said during the discussion.

Baugh has been with the Canton Police Department since 1996, and was promoted to his current position in 2020. He has also held positions on statewide boards, and was recently appointed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to the Organized Retail Crime Advisory Board.

Cole has been the city treasurer and deputy city manager for Saline since 2021, and served as acting city manager during a recent vacancy. She previously worked as township administrator for Sumpter Township near Belleville, and before that ran her own business as a certified public accountant. When Adrian’s interview process began, she had also just been offered the position of city manager in Boyne City.

Commissioners also expressed their appreciation to the two internal candidates who applied, parks and recreation director Jeremiah Davies and utilities director Will Sadler.  

“That took a lot of courage for our department heads to put their names in the hat,” commissioner Mary Roberts said, adding that being able to field two finalists from within is a good sign for an organization.

Roberts said it was a difficult choice, and that she was evenly divided between Baugh and Cole. She said she liked Cole’s enthusiasm and some of the programs she has brought to Saline, as well as her financial experience and her background as a small business owner. At the same time, Roberts said Baugh is somebody who will be a servant leader and “would do a lot of consensus-building, within our community and within our staff.”

Commissioner Bob Behnke said he saw Cole as somebody with strong leadership skills, and that he appreciated Cole’s background as a CPA, particularly with looming uncertainties in state and federal funding. In addition, he said he heard from residents who liked the energy she brought into the room in her interview.

Although Cole’s resume showed the most obvious financial background, some commissioners noted that as police chief, Baugh has also had to manage a budget. 

Commissioner Gordon Gauss said that the budget of Canton’s police department is almost the same size as Adrian’s overall budget, and the number of officers and administrators that Baugh oversees now is similar to the size of Adrian’s city government. On the other hand, he said, Saline is smaller than Adrian.

Gauss also noted that Baugh has family connections to Adrian and is familiar with the community.

Commissioner Kelly Castleberry said many police department budgets have faced challenges recently.

“I’ve worked in nonprofits most of my career, and you have to learn how to rub two pennies together to get a quarter. I feel like he has that ability as well,” she said of Baugh.

Castleberry also spoke positively about what commissioners learned about his tenure as police chief in Canton.

“For a police chief to be beloved by his staff and people, and beloved by such a multifaceted community, is huge to me,” she said.

Behnke agreed, saying that Baugh’s record “shows that he has the depth and breadth of a leader that’s facing the times when it comes to incidents of police violence, how to address that in a proactive manner, and engage the community in how to respond appropriately.”

During his tenure as police chief, Baugh worked with the Canton Coalition for Inclusive Communities to form a citizen-led committee to investigate allegations of police misconduct or bias.

The commission briefly discussed the idea of calling candidates back for another interview, but were cautioned by Amy Cell, president of Yeo & Yeo, that a delay could lead to candidates accepting other jobs, particularly with the knowledge that Cole had already received an offer from Boyne City.

Commissioners ultimately decided to go ahead and make a choice. 

“We’re up here to make decisions,” Roberts said, “and sometimes we don’t have all the time in the world to make these decisions.”

At the end of the meeting, Heath offered her thanks to Emrick for his work as interim administrator over the past several months, a comment that drew applause from both the commission and the audience.

“Some people will step into an acting role just to help out, and they just kind of let it be status quo, just to get through, and that is not how Chief Emrick took that job on,” Heath said. “He took every part of it — the good, the bad and the ugly.”