In a meeting last night, the Durham City Council unanimously adopted an ambitious working list of the qualities it wants in Durham's new city manager.
The meeting, a special session that took place two hours before the regularly scheduled council meeting, revolved around an list of 11 areas of focus and eight personal or professional characteristics for the person who will replace Lamont Ewell as city manager after he leaves for San Diego Dec. 27.
"We're looking for Superman or Superwoman, which is really what Lamont Ewell was," council member Dan Hill said before the meeting. "He was terrific, and we're looking for another Lamont Ewell."
But council members cautioned that failing to meet all the criteria should not discourage anyone from applying for the position. "It's not presumed that the successful candidate scores 100 percent on all of these," Mayor Nick Tennyson said after the meeting.
Durham's racial and ethnic diversity and the tensions it sometimes causes is one of the list's most important issues.
"I think the top characteristic is that we need a manager with a background of success in a very diverse community," Tennyson said after the meeting. "After that, the issues related to economic development [are important]."
Other criteria include experience within, or ties to, the Southeast region, which council member Jacqueline Wagstaff mentioned as among her top priorities for the hiring.
"For me, it would be having that regional experience and the cultural diversity," she said after the meeting. "Being able to bring together the different ethnic groups.... Basically just being a person that can really deal with the city as a whole, from the lowest employee... to the top of the totem pole."
The list stresses the new manager's need to deal with Durham's unique position as the location of several major educational institutions, including Duke. It also highlights the importance of dealing with crime, smart growth, affordable housing, the environment, working with public schools and the possibility of merging some functions with the county government. It emphasizes that the next manager will need strong managerial skills and experience in a number of areas.
"We should move toward the elimination [of root causes of crime including] poverty, racism, inadequate housing, inadequate educational opportunities, unstable parental situations... lack of jobs," Mayor Pro Tem Howard Clement said after the meeting, adding that all the criteria are equally important.
The list will be passed on to Slavin Management Consultants, the search firm for the new city manager, which will use a revised version of it as a basis for finding candidates for the job. The search will extend nationwide, Tennyson said.
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