The chairman of a committee tasked with overseeing the hiring process of Dallas' next city manager said he wants to make the hire next month.
Mayor pro tem Tennell Atkins, sat down with NBC 5 ahead of a scheduled meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee on Administrative Affairs on Monday.
"The same timeline we put out there, it might be shrinking a little bit. It’s still going to be the same timeline,” Atkins said.
After a two-and-a-half hour closed session, the ad hoc committee resolved to meet December 23 at 9am to interview semifinalist candidates virtually, as the next step in the city manager hiring process.
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Atkins comments and the committee action came hours after three city council members unsuccessfully attempted to convene a special meeting of the 15-member Dallas City Council to interview semifinalists, discuss the position and potentially make a hiring recommendation.
Council members Gay Donnell Willis, Paula Blackmon and Jaynie Schultz wrote the memo Friday triggering the called meeting and were joined by colleagues Adam Bazaldua and Omar Narvaez. None are on the 5-member committee handling the city manager search.
Blackmon reiterated what she views as a lack of transparency and an inability to obtain city records throughout November about the number of candidates who applied. She cited recently voter-passed propositions requiring the city to hire 900 police officers, along with the need to hire a permanent police chief as key reasons to make a hire soon.
"The time for action is now and the leaders around this horseshoe need to do their duty and hire a city manager," Blackmon said.
The city council meeting that failed to convene for lack of a needed nine members in attendance, did draw civic leaders who showed up to voice support for interim city manager Kim Tolbert, one of four named semifinalists.
Cynt Marshall, who is retiring as CEO of the Dallas Mavericks at the end of the year, said communication with city hall has improved in the seven months since Tolbert took over the acting city manager position.
"You have a winning team in your interim city manager," Marshall said.
Atkins, who was appointed to chair the committee by Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, did not attend the meeting Monday morning and said he plans to have three community meetings in January to allow for public input on the search too.
“We don’t want to go out there and get ahead of ourselves and everybody say ‘well, you didn’t do this, you didn’t do that’," Atkins said. "We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to be knee-jerk reaction. Let’s be professional.”
The ad hoc committee chaired by Atkins went into a closed-door session immediately after convening at 1 p.m.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
