CUMBERLAND — Allegany County government’s personnel chief provided a glimpse of the applicant pool Thursday for the 36 people who have applied for the position of county administrator.

Brian Westfall, director of human resources, said County Commissioners Jim Stakem, Bob Hutcheson and Dale Lewis have agreed not to fill the position until after Jan. 1, the halfway point of the current fiscal calendar. It’s one of several cost-saving measures the commissioners have implemented to cut more than $2 million from this year’s budget.

“It’s primarily a budget consideration,” Westfall said Thursday when questioned by the Times-News.

Of the 36 applicants, 11 reside in Maryland, five in Virginia and three each from Minnesota and Florida. There are two candidates for the county’s top appointed position from Michigan, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Montana with one candidate each from New York, North Carolina, Colorado, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Tennessee.

There are 30 men and six women, Westfall said.

Very little movement has taken place on the search for former County Administrator Vance Ishler’s replacement since a July 16 public meeting in which Westfall announced there were 36 applicants. The deadline to apply for the job was June 26. Westfall said he sent letters to each applicant explaining the search is on hold and “that unless they notified me otherwise, we would consider them still to be in the applicant pool.”

On Thursday, Westfall declined to confirm the number of applicants but said there have been no additional applications accepted since June 26 and no candidate has officially withdrawn from consideration.

Westfall said he isn’t worried that the delay would eliminate some applicants from consideration.

“There’s always that potential,” he said, but “given the state of the economy, I don’t expect there’s been an awful lot of movement one way or another.”

Ishler is one of 99 candidates for the position of town manager in Marathon, Fla. A local news outlet, KeysNet.com, provided the names and brief professional summaries of each candidate in a Nov. 25 report.

Westfall said he wouldn’t “go in that direction.”

“I think a lot of people apply for these jobs in confidence,” Westfall said. “If they knew that their identifying information was going to be released to the public, it might put them in jeopardy, at least in the early stage. If a finalist, that’s one thing.”

He continued: “I have a personal reluctance for releasing any information that might be used or could be used to potentially identify applicants for a job. I think our applicant pool would suffer if people knew we were releasing that kind of information.”

But, Westfall acknowledged, “obviously, people still applied for (the job) in Florida.”

If the selection process begins in earnest in early January, Westfall said “you’re probably talking a couple of months” before a replacement is named. Certain issues, such as the prospective replacement’s contractual obligations at his or her present employer, are out of the county’s control, he said.

It’s an outside possibility that the current fiscal year will end June 30 without a replacement, but “it would be my hope that we would not” have that scenario, Westfall said. His role in the process is to help narrow down the candidate list from 36 to a more manageable number for the commissioners. After that, Westfall will primarily serve as logistics coordinator for bringing in applicants for interviews.

“The commissioners have made it pretty clear they’re going to be making the decisions,” he said.

Contact Kevin Spradlin at kspradlin@times-news.com.