The Richardson City Charter imposes on the City Council a daunting task — filling a vacancy on the Council. Council Member Dan Barrios resigned and the remaining Council members are required to appoint his successor. Here's the schedule the Council adopted:
| Application Period | Jul 22 - Aug 7 |
| Public Release of Applicant List | Aug 11 |
| Council Review of Applications | Aug 11-16 |
| Council Selects Applicants to be Interviewed | Aug 17 |
| Council Conducts Applicant Interviews | Aug 24 |
| Council Announces a Maximum of 3 Finalists | Sep 14 |
| Council Conducts Finalists Interviews/Identifies Lone Finalist | Sep 21 |
| Council Vote on Appointment, Swearing-In | Sep 28 |
The application deadline has now passed. There's good news and bad: The good news is that a surplus of qualified people stepped up and volunteered to serve out the remainder of Barrios's term (until May, 2027). The bad news, if I can call it that, is the Council has to sift through the 13 applicants and, out of them, pick one.
With no further ado, here are the applicants, listed alphabetically by last name:
1. Richard Roy Bell (Rick)
2. Madison Ann Blumenthal
3. Daniel Evan Burdette
4. Colin Lancaster Christ
5. Jeffrey Alan Davis
6. Darrell Kirk Day
7. Alexis R Dryer
8. Jeffrey David Griffin
9. Patrick Sean Murphy
10. Jordan Raymond Noret
11. Lawrence Scott Ricamore
12. Genevra Elaine Thomas
13. Eric James Willadsen
Spoiler: I won't be reviewing the applicants here. I won't be ranking them. I won't be picking favorites, although I have a couple. In this post, I'm limiting my comments to my suggestion of the process the Council should use to make *their* selection.
Individual Council members are personally reviewing the applications. On Monday, August 17, they will meet in open session and decide which of the candidates they will interview in open session the following Monday, August 24. They can choose to interview all thirteen, or any number less than that. After the interviews, they must cull the candidate pool to at most three finalists for the September 21 interviews.
The recommendation for how to conduct the interviews consisted of bringing the applicants before the Council, one by one, and having them make an opening statement, answer seven questions posed by individual Council members, and then make a closing statement. If all goes to schedule, they can interview one applicant every 20 minutes. That means the whole process will take 13 applicants x 20 minutes = 260 minutes, or 4 hours and 20 minutes. The Council already made some suggestions that they might use a voting process to cull the applicant pool even before initial interviews are conducted. Assuming that's to keep the interview time under control, I've got a better idea of how to accomplish that without the blunt-force solution of rejecting some applicants without hearing from them. Read on.
I reviewed all 13 applicants and was impressed by the quality. Four list Leadership Richardson on their application. Four list HOA or Neighborhood Association service. Two list service on a City of Richardson board or commission. Those are strong credentials. They are the sorts of credentials that are easily defensible reasons for chooing an applicant. That makes them an easy shortcut to use when ranking applicants. Before Council members fall into that lazy mistake, note that the five applicants identified as having none of those obvious credentials are in some ways more interesting than the ones who do. Their professional qualifications are doing much of the work in their applications. The Council would risk eliminating some of its most intriguing candidates without ever hearing them explain, in person, what they would bring to the job. I dare say they deserve at least that much.
So, DON'T CULL THE LIST BEFORE THE INTERVIEWS. Instead, give all thirteen applicants a chance to make a face-to-face case to the Council for why they should be chosen. Replace the proposed 20-minute, back-and-forth interview with a 3-minute "elevator pitch." Thirteen 3-minute pitches would take only 39 minutes. From that and their applications, choose at most three finalists, who will be given full 30-minute, back-and-forth interviews on September 21.
This gives all applicants an opportunity to make their case in person. That's a win for the applicants. It gives Council members an opportunity to hear from everyone, in public, without the potentially awkward moments that accompany a full job interview. That's a win for Council members. And it keeps the schedule from ballooning up to an unmanageable size. A win for everyone, including the public. What's not to like?
"Do not reject them
Before they have chance to speak.
Hear from all of them."
—h/t ChatGPT
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