Dallas residents will have the chance to meet with three finalists vying to become the next city manager over the weekend. The events come after a tense, chaotic and confusing search process.
Residents will have the chance to “interact with the candidates and hear their perspectives on the future of Dallas,” according to an early-January press release.
City officials confirmed to KERA that the three events are still moving ahead as planned, despite inclement weather.
It may be one of the only times the public will interact with the candidates. Much of the search process discussion has happened behind closed doors — and that trend may continue.
Mayor Pro Tem Tennell Atkins, who chairs the city's Ad Hoc Committee on Administrative Affairs and has been overseeing the process, submitted a memo on Thursday asking for the candidate discussion to be held in executive session during next week's city council meeting.
Fort Worth Assistant City Manager William Johnson, Sacramento Assistant City Manager Mario Lara and current Dallas Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor-Tolbert will address Dallasites at three events over the weekend:
- Saturday, January 11, 2025, 10:00 AM – Dallas City Hall (Main Lobby, 1500 Marilla St., Dallas, TX)
- Saturday, January 11, 2025, 3:00 PM – Singing Hills Recreation Center (6805 Patrol Way, Dallas, TX)
- Sunday, January 12, 2025, 1:00 PM – Fretz Recreation Center (6950 Beltline, Dallas, TX)
This set of finalists is slightly different than those released in a mid-November 2024 report.
The current finalists changed after almost 50 other applicants were kept from council members until late last year. Elected officials at the time said they wanted to review other candidates — not just the four brought to them from the firm hired to conduct the search.
During that time, two of the original finalists withdrew their names from the running.
Getting to the three finalists has been confusing. Two factions inside City Hall have locked horns over how the process should be run.
Some officials side with Atkins, who has stressed the need for a unified process — using the committee to fully lead it. But after it was revealed that Atkins directed the firm conducting the search to withhold the names of applicants, other elected officials took matters into their own hands.
After unsuccessfully trying three times to get the names of applicants, District 9 Council Member Paula Blackmon said during a December meeting that the process has not felt transparent.
“…Because even I, couldn’t get [these applications] that finally showed up this morning,” Blackmon said. “Probably for some reason or another.”
As a result, Blackmon, District 13 Council Member Gay Donnell Willis and District 11 Council Member Jaynie Schultz authored a memo calling for a special meeting to interview the candidates.
The only problem? Almost none of their colleagues showed up and they failed to gain a quorum.
Willis said during that meeting she had hoped the council could have met “and be able to discuss this very important hire, for the CEO of the ninth-largest city in America and move the process forward.”
“We just wanted the ability to discuss with our colleagues our concerns and hear from them and have them hear from us,” Willis said. “We were ready to interview, informally, virtually, three of the semifinalist candidates.”
Schultz told KERA at the time that the search process isn’t chaotic “it is political, and [residents] should pressure their council member to make a decision.”
“People are using chaos and confusion in order to deflect from the real issue of actually making a decision,” Schultz added.
Another meeting scheduled for that same day to discuss the same topic was held entirely behind closed doors. When elected officials emerged, they unanimously voted to schedule another meeting for just days before the holidays.
That meeting proved to be another version of the ones scheduled before. After spending hours in a closed-door meeting — city council members emerged to announce that Tolbert, Lara and Johnson were the finalists for the position.
While the road to finding three candidates has been riddled with confusion, the real battle may still be ahead. Whoever ultimately becomes the next Dallas city manager will have to contend with a new set of controversial charter amendments that have left the city more vulnerable to litigation and will require it to hire hundreds more police officers.
The city’s grossly underfunded police and fire pension system is another hurdle the next city manager will have to navigate. And residents will expect that work to be handled — all while fixing streets and roads, minting city facilities and carrying out Dallas’ day-to-day operations.
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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