After getting heat for keeping candidates’ identities secret and evading reporters, City Council has released the names of six finalists for the city manager position. Mayor Steve Adler published the names and biographies to the Council Online Message Board Monday afternoon. The city has spent more than a year searching for a city manager, Austin’s […]
city manager
The city manager oversees the administrative segment of the City of Austin and is one of four Council direct reports.
Posted inRadio
Austin Monitor Radio: Looking for the next city manager with Elizabeth Findell
This week, Austin American-Statesman reporter Elizabeth Findell sits down with Austin Monitor freelancer Caleb Pritchard and editor Elizabeth Pagano to talk about the (sometimes very exciting) search for Austin’s next city manager. Though City Council voted to release the names of the final candidates for the position, that was only after a hot pursuit by […]
Posted inAustin
Public to meet manager candidates after all
After months of insisting on keeping the names of all city manager candidates secret, Steve Newton of Russell Reynolds Associates announced during Thursday’s City Council meeting that the names of the finalists would become public on either Friday or Monday. In addition, he said that the public would get to meet the last group of […]
Posted inCity Hall
Council flees posted meeting place for interviews
City Council continued to try to hide the names of candidates for city manager on Thursday, taking the unusual and possibly illegal step of leaving the location advertised for its executive session with the candidates and meeting in a place forbidden to the general public and the media. Although the official notice from the meeting […]
Posted inEMS
As talks end, EMS union, city at stalemate
Unlike the unions for police officers and firefighters, the Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services Employee Association could not reach an agreement with city of Austin management on Monday. Employees will continue to work under civil service rules, but there is no raise for them on the horizon. The union, led by its president, Tony Marquardt, […]
Posted inCity Hall
AFSCME supports Hart as city manager
The city employees union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, has sent a letter to Mayor Steve Adler requesting that City Council consider hiring Interim City Manager Elaine Hart as Austin’s permanent city manager. In the letter, which was delivered to the mayor but not Council members last week, AFSCME Local 1624 […]
Posted inCity Hall
Council will soon interview city manager candidates
In the next month, City Council will likely interview six to eight finalists to be the next city manager during two meetings that will be closed to the public. In a Tuesday discussion with Steve Newton of Russell Reynolds Associates, the consulting firm tasked with finding finalists for the job, Council members expressed support for […]
Posted inRadio
Austin Monitor Radio: The search for a new city manager with Laura Huffman
This week, Laura Huffman, the chair of the City Manager Search Advisory Task Force, sits down with Austin Monitor editor Liz Pagano to talk about that search, how it’s going and why it’s so darn important anyway. Audio of the show is embedded below. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/338759542″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /] The Austin Monitor’s work […]
Posted inReporters' Notebook
Reporter’s Notebook: Use your judgment
Judge judging the judge… It seems not everyone is a fan of County Judge Sarah Eckhardt’s iron-fisted management of Travis County Commissioners Court meetings. Her refusal last week to allow Commissioner Jeff Travillion to interject a question in the middle of a briefing on the DNA lab fallout led to the Precinct 1 representative’s brief […]
Posted inCity Hall
Task force dives into city manager search
The task force in charge of helping to write the job description for Austin’s next city manager hopes to stay involved in the process of picking the eventual hire, even though, as of now, the group is set to dissolve by the middle of next month. At Monday’s meeting of the City Manager Search Advisory […]
Posted inCity Council
Some seek to protect manager applicants’ names
A group of Austin citizens is urging City Council to do something out of the ordinary when they hire the next city manager – keep the names of the applicants a secret and only reveal the name of the person they want to hire once they’ve made a decision. According to a letter destined for […]
Posted inCity Hall
Council debates process for hiring city manager
The firm hired to find Austin’s next city manager said it hopes to get the job done by this summer. At a Feb. 28 City Council work session, Steve Newton of Russell Reynolds Associates Inc. said the firm would take about six weeks to search for candidates and allow 10 weeks for interviews to take […]