The Dallas City Council is set to interview three Dallas city manager candidates Monday, sources confirm.
DALLAS — Two of the four semifinalists to be Dallas’ next city manager announced last month won’t make interviews set for Monday, sources tell WFAA.
The Dallas City Council will interview interim city manager Kim Tolbert, William Johnson, an assistant city manager in Fort Worth, and Mario Lara, an assistant city manager in Sacramento, California on Monday, sources confirm.
The four semifinalists named in a memo and report in November included Tolbert and Johnson, as well as Mark Washington, an assistant city manager in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Zachary Williams, a county manager in Georgia.
Washington confirmed to our sister station WZZM that he was withdrawing from consideration for the Dallas city manager job and Williams is not among the candidates set for interviews Monday.
The news comes after infighting among city council members earlier this week about the number and quality of candidates for the job, and how long it’s taking to name a lone finalist. Some city council members last week said they were disappointed to see only four semifinalists named last month.
Other city council members said they hoped to see a city manager lone finalist named more quickly, and noted the timeline for making an offer is already passed the initially proposed timeline of this fall.
This week, Tolbert has also racked up endorsements from the Dallas Fire Fighters Association, the Dallas Hispanic Firefighters Association and the Dallas NAACP.
Art Davis, a director with Baker Tilly, the firm conducting the search for Dallas’ next city manager, said his firm heard concerns from some candidates about the passage of Dallas city charter amendments in November. Among the most controversial of those were two ballot propositions that passed backed by Dallas HERO, including one that requires the city to hire 900 more police officers allocate half of the city’s new revenue to improving police and fire pensions, and another that makes it easier for residents to sue the city.
After the election, credit rating firm Moody’s downgraded Dallas’ economic outlook from stable to negative.
In addition to the work of overseeing the city’s nearly $5 billion budget, police and fire department and more, the next city manager will have to hire a new police chief to replace Eddie Garcia, who retired from law enforcement earlier this year to take a city administration role in Austin. Garcia followed former Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax to Austin. Broadnax and Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson had a sometimes strained relationship before Broadnax moved to become Austin’s city manager earlier this year.