Dallas City Council has publicly expressed frustration over the current city manager search results, questioning why the list of finalists is so weak.
Consequently, three members of the Dallas City Council are requesting a Special Called Meeting of the Dallas City Council to begin at 9 a.m. on Monday, December 16, reported Fox 4. The nature of the meeting is to “interview Baker Tilly semifinalist and discuss qualifications of the candidates and deliberate the appointment of the City Manager,” reads a memorandum signed by Councilmembers Paula Blackmon (District 9), Jaynie Schultz (District 11), and Gay Donnell Willis (District 13).
Questions remain as to why the candidates are so limited or, more importantly, why city officials are just now acting concerned about the pool of candidates.
“This list of 50 is embarrassing. What went wrong during this recruitment process? And why was there not a dialogue through that part of the process to allow us to make sure we are actually getting better candidates?” Councilmember Adam Bazaldua recently told Fox News.
The Dallas Express examined a report from the Baker Tilly search firm, which surprisingly only showed four potential finalists for the demanding position.
The final pool of city manager candidates has now attracted disgruntled city council members demanding an explanation.
The city manager job will cost Dallas taxpayers at least $435,000 per year. The position involves overseeing the city’s daily infrastructure, law enforcement needs, and public service standards.
Dallas is one of the largest growing epicenters, so the search was expected to attract a more robust pool of qualified candidates.
Instead, the council was presented with just four names: Kimberly Tolbert, the current interim city manager slated for a win; William Johnson, the assistant city manager in Fort Worth; Mark Washington, the city manager of Grand Rapids; and Zachary Williams, the chief operating officer for DeKalb County in Georgia.
Council members had hoped for a list of at least ten strong candidates and were surprised and disappointed with the outcome of choices, per Fox 4 News. Additionally, there were allegedly 50 reported applicants for the position.
The narrow selection has led to more concerns about the recruitment process, with an almost ironic focus on diversity.
Council Member Cara Mendelsohn pointed out that only 10% of the applicants were Hispanic, despite Dallas’s large Hispanic population. She questioned whether the search firm had done enough outreach to ensure a diverse and representative candidate pool, regardless of her constituents wondering why the candidate pool was generally so weak regardless of racial association.
“We only had 10% Hispanic applicants. I would question that maybe there wasn’t further outreach because we have a very large Hispanic population. I would have liked to have seen more candidates that are Hispanic,” Mendelsohn told Fox.
Allegedly, council members were not entirely briefed on the applicants until the “last minute,” with some members expressing frustration that they were not consulted or given more insight into the search as it unfolded.
Similar complaints were also connected to the recent approval of Jay Chapa as the city manager of Fort Worth earlier this week, as previously reported by DX.