Nuggets

Kevin has teased out what i think is the most significant nugget from the hiring process:

To my mind, a better question (and one which we can assume and hope the Council is asking of the Mercer Group) is whether this was a sufficiently deep pool to attract the right candidate for Durham. The Bull City search attracted 54 candidates, a far cry from the 120 that the Town of Chapel Hill drew two years back.

Seems to me that a worthwhile goal for the next city manager would be that when he leaves, he leaves the most desirable job in the field.

Matt Dees highlights a quote from Mayor Bell in his article today, which is definitely a head-scratcher:

"It's never been a guarantee the ones we brought in would be the ones we chose," Bell said. "We just need to go through the process."

Let me be the first to note that if the city council doesn't select one of these three men to be our next manager after going through this much of the process, that would be a very bad thing.

UPDATE: I wanted to note a second point that Matt brought up, which is that the city apparently attempted to add a couple of currently employed assistant city managers to the pool of finalists, but that they balked because they didn't want to "upset their current employers." Come on, people. Grow up. You've got an assistant city manager, you should be proud that they've learned enough on the job to be considered for the top position somewhere else. Could you imagine if Mike Krzyzewski and the rest of the Duke athletic staff tried to prevent Johnny Dawkins from interviewing for the job at Stanford? Give me a break. That's what these programs do. Whoever the two cities in question are that are stifling the career advancement opportunities of their assistant managers need to take a lesson from the sports world. Fear of repercussion for seeking other opportunities is no way to get the most out of your people.