Tillamook City Manager Nathan George submitted a letter giving city council two months' notice of his impending departure for the same position in Fairview on October 17.

George said that he has loved his time in Tillamook, taking special pride in the employees he has worked with, and that the decision to leave was one of the hardest in his life but that the opportunity for a new challenge and personal factors led to his decision.

"I want to be there, but I truly love the employees and our team, and I love our community so it's difficult," George said.

George arrived in Tillamook in December 2020, taking over from Paul Wyntergreen, after a two-year stint at Arizona's Department of Transportation. A native of Washington state, George earned degrees at Brigham Young University and the University of Nebraska and had previous experience in city administration in the Midwest.

During his time with the city, George said that he had focused on creating a supportive and empowering environment for the city's 40 employees, with those efforts paying dividends. George said that since his arrival, the city was providing twice as much service, citing increased police patrols and street cleaning as examples.

"The thing I am most proud of is creating a safe environment for employees to flourish," George said. "We have 40 employees, they're all smart, they have good ideas, they're intelligent and they are hard workers. And to be able to create an atmosphere where they feel empowered and they feel support in their positions, has just opened up to where we can do so much."

Another area of pride for George is his modernization of the city's internal and public-facing technology. At the police department, this took the form of providing officers with iPads, allowing them to file reports from their cars, freeing them up to leave the office, while for other departments calendars were shared and Microsoft Teams' meetings were set up.

For citizens, George prioritized getting a searchable copy of the city's codes online and moved towards a digital system for filing paperwork.

The decision to leave was precipitated by several factors, according to George, including the opportunity to advance professionally and the availability of employment for his wife, who is a Montessori school teacher.

Last year, George requested and was granted permission to move away from Tillamook in August 2023, after his wife took a job in the Portland metro area, allowing the couple to move to Forest Grove. While George said he has been happy to commute, the position in Fairview has several job opportunities for his wife nearby and that, along with the chance to grow in his career, had led to the hard decision.

George said that he would post a job listing for an interim city manager in the coming days and start the process of finding a recruiting firm to lead the search for a permanent replacement.

That search process will likely take around two months, with councilors, employees and members of the public involved, and George said that he expects the council to be able to hire a firm and begin the search process by December.