Nearly 130 people applied to be Fort Worth’s top city planner since the position was posted in July.
The city isn’t planning to hire any of them.
Three members of the interviewing committee told the Report that Fort Worth needs “a unicorn” candidate who can navigate fast growth and lead community engagement efforts as city leaders map out long-term plans for development.
City officials are struggling to find someone with the desired breadth of big-city experience.
A director-level position devoted to shaping what the city will look like in decades to come hasn’t existed since before 2007, when the city combined its planning and development departments into one.
Such focus was passed between several departments over the past two decades as the city navigated budget cuts and other priorities surfaced. Now comprehensive planning is a division in the city manager’s office that the chief planning officer will lead.
Of the 127 candidates who applied for the job, at least 43 are from Texas, according to public records received by the Report. Names and histories of applicants were not included in the requested documents.
Costa, a former longtime assistant city manager on the interview committee, told the Report that the candidate list was narrowed to two finalists, but ultimately neither was hired.
“The final conclusion was we wish we could take certain elements of one candidate and combine them with other elements of the second candidate,” Costa said.
The hire is key as city leaders craft the 2050 Comprehensive Plan intended to provide a road map for future land use, budget priorities and annexation.
A job posting is available online and will remain open until the position is filled. The salary is advertised as $145,000 to $195,000.
Assistant City Manager Dana Burghdoff said the city needs someone with experience working in the public sector and with a municipality close to the size of Fort Worth, which has more than 1 million residents and is on track to being the nation’s 10th largest.
A background in both is ideal but not required, Burghdoff said.
“We have applicants who have much smaller city experience, which would be equivalent to like one-tenth of Fort Worth, or they’re in an area that’s not growing,” Burghdoff said.
Many applicants had experience ranging from environmental issues and land use to transportation, but none had the comprehensive expertise they are looking for, she added.
The officer must eliminate and prevent silos between departments to ensure city staff are “pulling in the same direction,” Burghdoff said. Also important is someone who communicates well within City Hall as well as with residents across Fort Worth.
Ann Zadeh, a city planner and former council member on the interview committee, said the planning officer must have the ability to look over all city departments and coordinate long-term strategies between them.
Zadeh said highly qualified candidates might be dissuaded from applying given the city’s perceived history of prioritizing development over planning.
“If you don’t have somebody who’s over planning everywhere — who can look at it from an economic development perspective, from an infrastructure perspective, from a community engagement perspective … you get these pockets of activity going on, but there’s nobody looking at the whole umbrella,” she said.
In April, Burghdoff heads to the National Planning Conference, where she’ll work to attract applicants from among the country’s best city planners.
Her pitch to potential candidates, she said, is that they have the chance to shape the future of the country’s 11th largest city, which is now elevating planning “in a way that hasn’t been done in a long time.”
Burghdoff couldn’t point to any problems Fort Worth faced that would have been solved by a chief planning officer over the last 20 years. It’s more a case of “we may not know what opportunities we’ve missed” when it comes to building out Fort Worth, she said.
“We could perhaps do things in a way that’s more streamlined and aligned, so that the product we’re getting is better than it might be otherwise,” she said. “What might have happened is fine, but could it have been better?”
Drew Shaw is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.orgor @shawlings601.
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