A nationwide search for Roseburg’s next chief administrator has ended with the selection of Anette Spickard, an experienced Western municipal executive whose Oregon government career stretches back decades and who will return to the state this fall to take charge of Douglas County’s largest city.
The Roseburg City Council authorized the mayor Sept. 2 to complete an employment agreement with Spickard, bringing months of recruitment and deliberations toward a close following the June retirement of longtime City Manager Nikki Messenger. Spickard, currently city manager in Sedona, Arizona, is scheduled to take office Nov. 30.
Her arrival will transfer executive control of Roseburg’s municipal operations from Police Chief Gary Klopfenstein, who has carried the additional responsibilities of city manager since July 1. Klopfenstein is expected to remain in the interim position through November before returning his full attention to leadership of the Roseburg Police Department.
Spickard was selected from a national applicant pool of 42 candidates assembled through a recruitment conducted with GMP Consultants. Council members reviewed 13 semifinalists before narrowing the competition to six finalists for a two-day interview process involving elected officials, city employees and community representatives.
Among those competing for the position was former Medford City Manager Robert Field, placing a familiar Southern Oregon administrator among a field drawn from governments around the country. Roseburg ultimately turned to Spickard, whose career combines Oregon county and municipal government with city management assignments in Idaho and Arizona.
She will return to Oregon with more than 25 years of public-service experience and a professional history rooted heavily in the state. Spickard worked in Lane County government as an accountant and budget analyst before advancing through the county assessor’s office, eventually serving as deputy assessor and elected Lane County assessor. She later moved into senior municipal work with the City of Springfield before leaving Oregon in 2018 to become city manager in McCall, Idaho.
Sedona hired Spickard as city manager in 2024. There she has directed a municipal organization of more than 200 employees and managed approximately $100 million in public spending while overseeing an administrative portfolio extending through public safety, transportation, housing, infrastructure, wildfire resilience and the pressures associated with managing a heavily visited Western city.
Roseburg will place a similarly broad government operation under her direction. The city serves approximately 24,000 residents and operates with 176 full-time-equivalent employees. Its fiscal 2025-26 budget totals approximately $113.9 million, financing services that reach from police and fire protection to streets, public works, planning, parks, recreation, finance, municipal court operations and the public library.
Spickard will occupy the administrative position connecting those departments to the policy and financial decisions made by the mayor and City Council. Roseburg’s council-manager government leaves legislative and policy authority with the elected council while assigning execution of those decisions and management of the municipal workforce to the city manager.
That authority gives the incoming manager an immediate role in some of Roseburg’s largest continuing responsibilities. Public-safety spending, employee compensation, infrastructure investment, development, housing and long-range financial planning all pass through an organization that will soon operate under new executive management.
Public safety carries particular weight in the transition because Roseburg has spent the summer with its police chief simultaneously occupying the city manager’s office. Klopfenstein’s temporary assignment maintained continuity after Messenger’s departure, but it also placed responsibility for the entire municipal organization on an official whose permanent position is command of the city’s police department.
Spickard’s Nov. 30 arrival will end that arrangement. Her previous work also brings wildfire administration into the experience she carries back to Oregon. Sedona operates in an environment where wildfire preparation and resilience are persistent municipal concerns, and those responsibilities have been part of Spickard’s city management portfolio. Douglas County faces its own recurring exposure to large wildfires, where city fire services can operate within much larger responses involving county agencies, rural districts and state and federal resources.
Financial management will be equally prominent when the transition occurs. Roseburg is moving through a comprehensive compensation examination covering its nonrepresented workforce, with approximately 40 employees across 30 classifications included in the review. The work is examining salary structures, job classifications, internal compensation relationships and comparisons with other Oregon public employers.
Spickard will also arrive with formal training in public administration and business management. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Loyola Marymount University and a Master of Public Administration from the University of Washington and has attained credentialed manager status through the International City/County Management Association.
Roseburg advertised the position with an annual salary range between $185,500 and $220,000, based on qualifications. Spickard’s base salary has been reported at $210,000, in addition to benefits.
The council’s recruitment process encountered a procedural problem before the final selection. City officials disclosed that an Aug. 6 executive session connected to the city manager search had not been included in the required public meeting notice. Roseburg acknowledged the omission and began reviewing its notification procedures. The city determined that the notice problem did not automatically invalidate the meeting or subsequent council action.
The selection process continued through additional scheduled proceedings before council members returned to open session Sept. 2 and authorized the employment agreement.
Spickard will have nearly three months between her selection and first day in Roseburg, leaving Klopfenstein responsible for keeping the city’s administrative work moving through the fall. The extended transition also gives Roseburg time to prepare for a permanent manager whose career began in Oregon government before taking her through executive posts elsewhere in the West.
When that transition concludes Nov. 30, Roseburg will be placing more than a new name in the city manager’s office. A municipal government with a budget approaching $114 million, nearly 180 full-time-equivalent employees and responsibility for the essential services of Douglas County’s largest city will return to permanent executive management, while the police chief who has carried both assignments since July returns exclusively to the city’s public-safety command.