By Scott Nishimura snishimura@bizpress.net
Fort Worth narrowed its city manager search to three finalists Tuesday, and will disclose who they are Monday, city officials said.
Mayor Betsy Price and City Council members interviewed five candidates in closed-door meetings Tuesday, before picking three finalises.
The city will then invite them back in May on dates to be determined, with oral and written exercises, she said.
“We’ll give them a chance to come look at our city and hopefully pick a new city manager,” she said.
None of the candidates is internal, she said.
The mayor and council reset its city manager search in February, after interviewing four finalists and eliminating all four.
The new batch of finalists didn’t surface as candidates in the original search, for various reasons, even though all some or all may have been identified then by the city’s search firm, the Whitney Smith Co., Price said.
Several other major cities were conducting manager searches then and were farther ahead than Fort Worth, Price said.
“Some of the candidates we have been talking to were involved in one or two of those searches,” Price said.
She said the city didn’t change its criteria. “We just put a little more focus on prior city manager or assistant city manager experience,” she said.
The new manager will replace Tom Higgins, who is retiring.
