A consulting firm hired to recruit Dallas’ next city manager issued an apology on Tuesday after a glaring error was discovered on its recruiting brochure.
The brochure, prepared by the firm Baker Tilly, featured an image of the Houston skyline — not Dallas — on its cover, an oversight that quickly caught the attention of City officials, residents, and online commenters. The error was discovered last week by officials during a Dallas City Council committee review of the materials, according to a report by Fox 4 KDFW.
Art Davis, a spokesperson for Baker Tilly, addressed the mistake, saying, “[We] apologize for that unfortunate error, but as soon as the question was raised during that committee meeting we immediately corrected that.”
The consulting firm claimed that the photo was incorrectly tagged in the image catalog used to source the picture.
On Tuesday, the council committee responsible for overseeing the recruitment process reviewed several revised brochure options, all featuring accurate and recognizable images of the Dallas skyline this time.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the City hired the Baker Tilly firm at a cost of $134,000 to search for a new city manager following the departure of T.C. Broadnax, who took on the role of city manager in Austin.
Broadnax announced his resignation as Dallas’ city manager in February after facing pressure from the Dallas City Council. He had been urged to resign almost two years ago and had faced near-dismissal in the past.
There were previously concerns about the consulting firm’s initial investment of time into the search for Dallas’ new city manager.
In July, two months after the Dallas City Council hired the executive recruitment firm to find a new city manager, the Chicago-based company had not provided any updates on its progress.
At that time, the Dallas city manager position was absent from the 22 active executive searches displayed on Baker Tilly’s website. However, the firm was actively overseeing executive searches for several other Texas cities, including Midland, El Paso, Irving, Fulshear, and Brownsville.
Nina Arias, Dallas’ human resources director, previously stated that the anticipated duration for this type of job search is usually around six months.