Panel to recommend four candidates for city manager
Posted by jimfaile on 09/03 at 08:01 PM
The search committee reviewing applicants for the position of Hartsville city manager will recommend four candidates to Hartsville City Council.
Interim City Manager Vern Myers said the search committee interviewed five candidates in Columbia on Tuesday and settled on four to recommend to council for its consideration.
Those names are expected to be presented to council in an executive session at Tuesday’s regular monthly council work session at 5:30 p.m., Myers said.
Councilman Johnny Andrews, a member of the search committee, and Kenneth D. Carrick Jr. of Coleman Lew & Associates Inc., the Charlotte, N.C. executive recruitment firm hired by the city to help with the search, will present the names to council, Myers said.
“We anticipate that Tuesday during the work session council will establish how their process is going to go forward from here,” Myers said.
The search committee conducted the interviews at the headquarters building of the S.C. Municipal Association, which made its offices available for the interviews as a courtesy to the city, Myers said. He said the panel felt Columbia offered a more central location for all of the applicants.
The panel met from about 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. conducting the interviews, Myers said.
“It was a good meeting,” Myers said. “The very interesting thing has been as we have gone through this process there has been a lot of agreement on the traits, on the personalities of the individuals. Even yesterday on these four there was universal agreement.”
Council is expected to conduct its own interviews of candidates before making a final selection.
South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act requires the release to the public of the names and background information on no fewer than three finalists for the position.
The city hired Coleman Lew & Associates to search out and screen candidates, including conducting preliminary interviews.
The firm started out with 81 resumes to review. Of those, 32 were deemed worth a closer look, Carrick said during the Aug. 19 meeting.
In the meantime, the consultants added some 80-plus names of people to contact, Carrick said. Not all of those were candidates, he said. Some were potential candidates who were not included among the original group of applicants the consultants thought might be interested in the position, he said. Others were contacted as resources, he said.
From there, the consultants narrowed the field to 11, one of whom withdrew from the process, Carrick said.
Former City Manager Jim Pennington resigned in January. Myers, former chairman of the Hartsville Planning Commission, has been serving as interim city manager since then.