New City Manager Starts Job for Columbia Falls

After a lengthy search extending back to last March, the City of Columbia Falls finally has a new city manager on the job.

Eric Hanks, who retired in August 2024 after a nearly 30-year career with the U.S. Navy, had his first day as the city manager of Columbia Falls on April 1. Before his retirement, Hanks had spent his last three years with the Navy as the commanding officer at the Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island in Washington.

He steps into the role after long-time city manager Susan Nicosia retired last June following a decades-long career in local government, including 13 as the city manager for Columbia Falls.

The city had begun vetting candidates to replace Nicosia last March, and ultimately went through multiple rounds of unsuccessful searches before the most recent one ended with the decision to hire Hanks. In the intervening months between Nicosia’s retirement and the hiring of Hanks, the city relied on a number of interim city managers, including former Columbia Falls Police Chief Clint Peters and most recently Mark Shrives, who spent 20 years in the U.S. Army before working in a variety of city manager and city administration roles, including in Hamilton and Polson, as well as a stint working for FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency).

Hanks said that his time as the commanding officer was his first experience in municipal government, and he described the Navy base as having a connection to a community about 25,000 people, including 10,000 daily workers, and another 15,000 people consisting of dependent families and retirees. It was an experience that he said taught him the value of providing municipal services.

“Fire, police, search and rescue, environmental and public works, and infrastructure, utilities, all those things. And it had all these experts and engineers, and just great Americans to do it,” he said of the array of agencies and offices that the base relied on.  

The job in Columbia Falls appealed to him as a way of continuing his work in municipal government, but Hanks also described his appreciation for what he sees as the city’s small town culture, its vibrancy, and the stability within city government and city staff. He also shared that his love for the outdoors made the job even more attractive.

“The mandate’s very clear to me that where we’re going right now is healthy. It can use some improvements in different areas. I need to work with the council and the staff and see where to make those corrections, and make, you know, just small tweaks,” Hanks said. “There won’t be any major changes on how we operate, but just trying to modernize, be it the technology, or how we outreach with the public.”

While Hanks continues to get onboarded and up-to-speed, Nicosia is currently contracted to help with the city’s budget for the coming fiscal year, and there will be some discussion at an upcoming council meeting about potentially contracting Shrives as an advisor to help on a couple projects that he’s been working on during his time as interim city manager.

Hanks said he’s originally from southwest Louisiana, and that he didn’t come from a military family, but when he had the opportunity to attend the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, he took it. “I wasn’t sure if I was going in to do a whole career. After those first couple years of being a naval officer, and seeing the impact, and working with sailors and Marines and Coast Guard, and a whole bunch of other services, just every tour got a little bit better and broadened the aperture of what I enjoyed doing.”

He describes his first 15 years of his 27 total in the Navy as primarily spent focused on naval aviation. During that period he served on an aircraft carrier, and said that his role boiled down to leading people and taking care of people “so they can do the amazing things that they do to execute our national defense mission.”

“And then the last nine or so years was much more at the executive level, learning how the business of the Navy works, or working with some of the senior-most people in the Navy and Department of Defense.”

He said he’s married with two adult children, and over the years he’s lived twice in Hawaii, in Germany, in Washington, D.C., in Florida and in Texas.

“And so, each of those tours would be like three years each, two to three years. And so you do that, and you go do something different, you have to learn how to quickly assess the organization you’re in, what kind of strengths we have, what are some opportunities to grow.”

In its reporting on the change of command ceremony Hanks participated in ahead of his retirement, the Whidbey News-Times credited him with spearheading work on spouse licensing, spouse employment, access to childcare and healthcare for sailors and families, as well as “reigniting” community outreach activities after the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper also reported that Hanks ended his time with the Navy having accumulated more than 3,300 flight hours.

In his first week working for Columbia Falls, Hanks has spent some of his time getting to know about the local organizations and agencies that work with the city, like the Chamber of Commerce, and visiting with those entities when possible. Wednesday night, he went to a meeting involving local fire departments, including volunteer fire departments and came away impressed.

“All the volunteer fire departments, that’s healthy. That that many people want to come and work for the community on volunteer basis is impressive.”

As part of his duties, he said he also plans on trying to look for opportunities to involve the community more, including by taking on more communication as part of an effort to help better explain and educate people how their local government works, and in some cases humanize the work of local government.

“A thriving community is successful when the citizens are involved. You don’t have to be a council member, you can be a board member, you can be on a commission, or come sit through a couple meetings,” Hanks said.

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