City clerk Janice Ellis confers with mayor AJ Hashmi before an executive search at which Paris city councilmen looked at a computer-aided presentation by a search firm on 34 city manager applicants from 19 states. (eParisExtra.com photo by Charles Richards)
By CHARLES RICHARDS
eParisExtra.com
A search firm presented the Paris City Council with 34 candidates from 19 states Monday night for the vacant city manager’s job.
“We had a very good evening,” mayor AJ Hashmi announced after the council emerged from a 45-minute executive session with representatives of Strategic Government Resources, whom the city contracted with to find applicants.
The Keller, Texas-based search firm had ranked the applicants in four tiers – with Tier 1 being most desirable and Tier 4 being least desirable, based upon the criteria council members had provided to SGR.
Monday night, the council asked SGR to bring back full resumes and background information on 10 of the 34 — all seven of the Tier 1 applicants and three of the five Tier 2 applicants.
All but one are currently employed as either city managers of smaller cities or assistant city managers of larger cities, the mayor said.
The council will pare the 10 semifinalists to “one or two or three” finalists in another executive session next Monday, as part of the Feb. 13 regular council meeting, the mayor said.
The finalists will be brought in for face-to-face interviews with the council as soon as possible after that, and it is hoped that Paris will have a new city manager sometime in February.
“I think all of us are quite pleased. It looks very promising,” the mayor said. “A few of them stood out, no question about that. All of the Tier 1 applicants are quite good.”
Of the 34 applicants presented to the council Monday night, 10 are from Texas, 3 from Michigan, 2 from California, 2 from Oklahoma, 2 from Oregon, 2 from Indiana, and one each from 13 other states.
No state-by-state breakdown was given on the 10 applicants who remain under consideration. At SGR’s insistence, none of the candidates has been identified at this stage of the job search.
The council had conducted its own search several months ago, but was unexcited by the field of 70 candidates who applied. Most were unemployed and between jobs.
Some of the Tier 4 candidates were among those whom the council had received applications from previously, but all 10 of the applicants still under consideration “are completely fresh candidates who have not applied for the job previously,” Hashmi said.
“There was not one councilman who said any of the Tier 4 candidates should be brought in,” the mayor said.
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SGR consultant Chet Noland looks on as Paris city councilmen prepare to review the applications of 34 candidates for the vacant Paris city manager job. Seated from left are councilmen Joe McCarthy and Edwin Pickle and mayor AJ Hashmi. (eParisExtra.com photo by Charles Richards)
Charles Richards Charles Richards moved to Paris in 2004 after retiring from a 40-year career in journalism – the last 26 years as a news writer and sports writer with The Associated Press in Dallas and Washington, D.C. In mid-2004, The Paris News coaxed him out of retirement, and he began covering the police, court and regional beat for The Paris News. Then in early 2005, he was switched to coverage of a sharply divided Paris City Council. He was appointed by the City Council in 2006 to the 12-member City Charter Review Commission, which extensively rewrote the outmoded document. His writing awards include two first-place awards in statewide competition for feature writing. The most recent was his 2005 story on a Paris doctor’s startling use of leeches in a successful attempt to re-attach a man’s severed ear. Over his career, Richards’ interview subjects include Alabama Gov. George Wallace, President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, David Koresh, Arnold Palmer, Muhammad Ali and numerous other political and sports figures. He is an alumnus of Texas Tech, where he was editor of the school newspaper. He lives in Paris with his wife, Barbara, who is retired after 30 years as a teacher and high school counselor.
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