Three Dallas City Council members have requested a special meeting on Monday to appoint the next city manager, according to a memo obtained by KERA. The move comes just a day after some officials said they were kept in the dark about nearly 50 other candidates for the position.
District 9 Council Member Paula Blackmon, District 11 Council Member Jaynie Schultz and District 13 Council Member Gay Donnell Willis submitted the memo to the city secretary’s office on Friday morning.
The slated meeting will include a closed session to discuss “qualifications of the candidates and deliberate the appointment of the City Manager,” according to the memo.
The memo also added a voting agenda item to the meeting to adopt a "resolution appointing" the next city manager.
“The most important task of a city council is to hire a city manager. Leading up to yesterday’s ad hoc committee meeting, the process has been loose and nontransparent,” the three elected officials said in a statement to KERA.
“It has excluded councilmembers in our most important duty to the taxpayers and it’s time to bring this critical choice to the full governing body.”
Members of the city’s Ad Hoc Committee on Administrative Affairs said they were disappointed that they only got applications for the four semifinalists recommended by Baker Tilly, the firm hired to conduct the search. That’s after they learned about 46 other candidates that had been kept from them for months.
That may have been by design.
Blackmon said during Thursday’s ad hoc committee meeting that she had tried three times to get the list of 50 candidates starting in mid-November.
Art Davis, a Baker Tilly director, told the committee that he had been instructed by Mayor Pro Tem Tennell Atkins, who chairs the committee, not to release that information.
Davis reported Blackmon’s repeated request for the candidate list to Atkins, according to an early-December email reviewed by KERA.
“As you directed, we are sharing this inquiry and continue to communicate through you, on behalf of the Dallas City Council Ad Hoc Committee on Administrative Affairs,” Davis wrote in the email. “We are committed to ensuring transparency and providing information according to established internal processes and complying with all legal requirements.”
Blackmon said this process should have been an open and transparent process, but it didn’t feel like it.
“…Because even I, couldn’t get [these applications] that finally showed up this morning,” Blackmon said during Thursday’s committee meeting. “Probably for some reason or another.”
Atkins indicated the process to hire a new city manager is sensitive. Once candidates apply and their names are obtained by the public and the media, it could cause problems with their current employers.
He also confirmed he hadn't seen the list of applicants until Thursday morning.
“I want to make sure I’m transparent about it, that nothing is behind the scenes, no hidden agenda,” Atkins said during Thursday's meeting. “But once I get it, it becomes public information. I just want to put that on the record.”
Now Blackmon, Willis and Schultz are trying to move the search process forward.
“Searches in the past have taken six months, but this search has dragged on for nearly a year with little to no clarity regarding next steps,” the elected official’s statement said.
“This next year brings major challenges to the City of Dallas, and with a third of our executive staff holding interim titles, including the Chiefs of Police and Fire, we must maintain stability in the organization and get to work finding compromise and solutions for the residents of Dallas.”
The search for a permanent city manager comes after former Dallas and current Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax resigned earlier this year. In the wake of his resignation, other top Dallas officials left the city — and some followed Broadnax to Austin.
That includes former Deputy City Manager John Fortune and Genesis D. Gavino, Broadnax’s former Dallas chief of staff.
Since then, Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert has been at the helm. She’s also a semifinalist for the position.
In September, former Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia announced his resignation — and plans to join Broadnax in Austin as an assistant city manager. That decision came just months after Tolbert penned an agreement to keep Garcia in Dallas.
Whoever is the next city manager will have to face an uncertain and uphill battle inside City Hall. That includes remedying the grossly underfunded police and fire pension system and helping to hire a new police chief and other executive staff.
The next city manager will also have to contend with a slate of controversial charter amendments passed by Dallas voters in early November. That includes two conservative-backed initiatives that have left the city vulnerable to increased litigation and will require it to hire hundreds more police officers.
Another charter amendment decriminalized up to four ounces of marijuana in the city. Voter approval of the new policy came with a lawsuit from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has leveled similar lawsuits against cities that have passed similar policies.
“A strong City Manager provides the organization with stability, a higher service level for our residents and accountability for staff,” Blackmon, Willis and Schultz said in their statement. “That is what is needed now.”
The special called council meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. Monday, Dec. 16.
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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