Six in running for Hartsville city manager
By JIM FAILE
The search committee that will recommend potential candidates for the position of Hartsville City Manager began reviewing the resumes of 10 applicants Thursday.
After a closed-door executive session that lasted more than two hours Thursday afternoon, the panel narrowed the list of potential candidates down to six, said Interim City Manager Vern Myers.
“The next step is, we are attempting to arrange face-to-face interviews with these individuals with the search committee,” Myers said. “Coleman Lew will coordinate that, and when the dates are set, we’ll let you know.”
The panel met with Kenneth D. Carrick Jr. and Nick Lomax, partners with Coleman Lew & Associates Inc., the Charlotte N.C., executive recruitment firm hired by the City of Hartsville to search out and screen potential candidates for the job.
Eventually the search committee will recommend an as yet undetermined number of candidates to Hartsville City Council, which will conduct its own interviews and make the ultimate decision on hiring a manager.
During the executive session, the committee got to hear insights from Carrick and Lomax from interviews they have conducted with the individuals.
During an open session before the executive session, Carrick presented an overview of the search process thus far.
The firm started out with 81 resumes to review. Of those, 32 were deemed worth a closer look, Carrick said.
In the meantime, the firm added some 80-plus additional names of people to contact, he said. Not all of those were potential candidates, Carrick said. Some were candidates who were not among the original applicants that the consultants thought might be interested in being considered for the job, he said. Others were contacted as resources, he said.
From that mix of names the consultants whittled the field down to 11 individuals, Carrick said. One of those eventually withdrew from the process, leaving the 10, he said.
He said the applicants all seemed to realize that Hartsville is among a unique group of small cities that possess “an embarrassment of riches.”
“In general, what we learned about Hartsville was very positive,” Carrick said.
“If there was any stumbling block for any of them, some said it (Hartsville) was too small for them to consider,” Carrick said.
“When you look at these 10, there’s quite a bit of diversity among them,” he said.
He said 30 percent were African American or female. Geographically, some come from inside South Carolina, others from out of state.
“All of them have had some touch of public experience,” he said. And the levels of experience vary among the candidates, he said.
“They’re interested. They’ve done their research,” Carrick said.
“Of course, with a pool this size, things can always change,” he said.
He said several of the 10 cited concerns about confidentiality but said all have been made aware that at some point in the process the names of finalists will have to be made public under the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
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.
The team will be hard pressed to find a candidate of the caliber of interim city manager Vern Myers- he has done an amazing job.