DALLAS — Replacing Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax is expected to take at least seven months and involve stakeholder meetings, hiring an executive search firm, and appointing an interim leader to fill the position temporarily, the city council learned Monday.
Broadnax announced his departure last week in a sudden move that was coordinated with a majority of the city council and kept secret from the mayor, with whom he had a history of disagreements, WFAA reported.
In a meeting of the city's Ad Hoc Committee on Administrative Affairs Monday, city leaders from the HR and procurement departments laid out an "expedited" timeline for hiring Broadnax's replacement, expected to take at least seven months, a councilmember said.
The handout city council members received detailing the timeline was not made available publicly and requests by WFAA for a copy were not fulfilled.
"This is not something that’s as easy as opening up a bag of chips," said Councilmember Carolyn King Arnold of the hiring process. "This is a long haul. It takes commitment -- and timelines are sometimes not what we think."
City Procurement Director Danielle Thompson and Human Resources Director Nina Arias said they aimed to start the process with a request for executive search firms to submit proposals issued next month.
The city would then close solicitation for proposals at the end of April, with the goal of scoring the options against a council-approved rubric and selecting a winning proposal by the May 22 or June 12 city council meeting. The process would involve stakeholder meetings and input from the city council, Thompson and Arias said.
With the city council's approval, the search firm would begin culling candidates to present a list of finalists for the job, which pays over $400 thousand, to the city council.
"This is exactly what’s wrong with City Hall," said Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn, expressing her hope our new city manager would speed up the procurement process.
Other city council members pointed out that bureaucracy takes time and requires input from various city agencies and, often, the public. "Just being realistic, we do have state law requirements that the private world doesn’t have," Councilman Chad West said.
The chair of the committee, Councilman Tennell Atkins, gave a deadline of March 8 for councilmembers to give Thompson and Arias their feedback on the scope of the proposal, the scoring of the rubric to be used to select a search firm, and the fee structure to pay those firms.
The March 8 deadline will allow Thompson and Arias to begin soliciting proposals from search firms while the city council is on a two-and-a-half week break beginning March 11, Atkins said.
On Tuesday the full city council will meet to consider appointing Deputy City Manager Kim Tolbert to serve as interim beginning when Broadnax's resignation goes into effect in June.