Council begins interviewing semifinalists for city manager

The search for San Antonio’s next city manager inched closer to completion Monday, as three of the eight semifinalists for the job were interviewed by the City Council in a closed session.

Deputy City Manager Peter Zanoni and Assistant City Managers Carlos Contreras and Lori Houston were the first to make their cases to council members. Six internal candidates made it through the first round of cuts. The other candidates will be interviewed Tuesday.

The candidates weren’t allowed to comment on the interviews because they occurred in executive session, but Zanoni summed up the mood among the candidates.

“The mood is good, but the stress level — you can sense on everybody’s faces — is high,” he said.

Mayor Ron Nirenberg is expected to announce two or three finalists Tuesday evening. They will proceed to a last round of interviews with the council Wednesday.

“It will be a competitive field, and the council has a very tough decision ahead of us, but we’ll be able to work through it professionally,” Nirenberg said.

The other five candidates are: Deputy City Manager Erik Walsh, Assistant City Managers Maria Villagómez and Rod Sanchez, along with external candidates Orlando Sanchez, a retired Las Vegas deputy city manager, and Majed AlGhafry, a Dallas assistant city manager.

City Manager Sheryl Sculley announced she was retiring soon after the Nov. 6 election, when voters overwhelmingly approved a proposition that sets a salary cap and tenure limit for future city managers. While the proposition doesn’t affect her, it was widely seen as a referendum of Sculley’s compensation. With a $475,000 base salary and up to $100,00 in performance-based bonus, she is the highest-paid city manager in the nation.

During her 13-year tenure, Sculley worked for four mayors and oversaw an organization of about 12,000 employees and a budget of about $2.7 billion. She is credited with improving city finances and services.

Earlier Monday, the council unanimously approved a motion that changed the effective date of Art Hall’s appointment, allowing him to participate. Though Hall, the interim District 2 councilman, was appointed and sworn in Thursday, he received only seven affirmative votes, which would have meant he couldn’t take his seat for 10 days if the council hadn’t taken the action Monday.

Separately, Councilman Greg Brockhouse criticized the mayor for not conducting the interviews in public.

“All interviews for City Manager should be held in public, for all of San Antonio to participate and view,” Brockhouse said in a statement. “This decision will affect our community for years to come. The best we can do is conduct the interviews with total transparency.”

Nirenberg said the process has been more transparent than any other major city’s.

Brockhouse “knows very well that we have a thorough vetting, and a professional, public vetting process for the finalist that will take place,” the mayor added.

After the final pick is made public — which could happen as soon as Wednesday — there will be a public symposium on Jan. 23 at the University of Texas at San Antonio’s downtown campus. The council is scheduled to vote on Jan. 31.