Dallas City Council appointed Kimberly Bizor Tolbert as city manager at Wednesday’s council meeting, ending a process that began nearly a year ago with the resignation of former City Manager TC Broadnax.
Stewart speaking in support of Tolbert’s appointment at Jan. 22’s council meeting.
Tolbert secured the city’s highest-ranking unelected position after a 13-2 council vote, with District 10 Council Member Kathy Stewart voting in the affirmative. The former deputy city manager officially filled Broadnax’s role in June following his formal departure, and helped the city navigate through a budget process plagued by a $38 dollar deficit.
The process to find a new city manager — which Mayor Eric Johnson called “the most important decision a council can make” — ramped up in recent months with a nationwide search, community meetings, a draft hiring brochure that erroneously depicted Houston’s skyline and concerns within city hall over its transparency.
Stewart, a member of the ad hoc committee for administrative affairs since the onset of the search, said that she felt the admittedly prolonged ordeal was warranted by the weight of finding a new top city official, a process which she believes resulted in a “really good decision.”
“The process did take longer than we had hoped,” Stewart said. “I think everybody would acknowledge that, but I think it’s important to go through a process when you’re making a big decision.”
The new city manager previously served as a chief of staff and deputy city manager from 2017 to May of 2024, when she began the process of stepping into Broadnax’s former role on an interim basis.
Some council members voiced frustration over an alleged lack of transparency in the search, with District 9 Council Member Paula Blackmon, District 11 Council Member Jaynie Schultz and District 13 Council Member Gay Donnell Willis calling a meeting to interview candidates virtually on Dec. 16 of last year. Only two other council members, District 6 Council Member Omar Narvaez and Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Adam Bazaldua, attended the meeting, which in turn did not have a quorum to conduct city business.
“The most important task of a city council is to hire a city manager. Leading up to yesterday’s ad hoc committee meeting, the process has been loose and nontransparent,” Blackmon, Shultz and Willis said in a statement to KERA in December.
“It has excluded council members in our most important duty to the taxpayers and it’s time to bring this critical choice to the full governing body.”
Stewart says concerns over transparency were misplaced, and instead felt that most of the frustration stemmed from the length of the process.
“I feel like we were transparent, especially with our fellow colleagues, with our fellow council members,” Stewart said. “You don’t see all the decisions. And I understand they were impatient, and that’s why I said this was a big decision, and it just took a little longer than we hoped it would. And so I understand impatience on a lot of people’s part, but I think in the end, we came up with the right decision.”
The council member from District 10, which comprises most of Lake Highlands, was also tapped by Mayor Johnnson to help navigate the contract negotiation process, owing to her legal background.
District 14 Council Member Paul Ridley was one of two council members who voted against Tolbert’s appointment, citing concerns over a so-called “golden parachute” — a clause in the contract that states in the event of the city manager’s firing, that she will collect a full salary for two years (around $900,000). Bazaldua called the claim “disingenuous at best.”
Stewart declined to comment on the contract, saying that she would prefer to wait for a statement from the city attorney’s office.
Tolbert will now be charged with overseeing yet another set of critical hiring choices with vacancies at the top of both the Dallas Police Department and Dallas Fire-Rescue. Stewart said that she believes filling the vacancies are, and should be, at the top of Tolbert’s priorities, along with issues of public safety, homelessness and housing.
“We’ve made a really good decision, and I think as much as the process may have lasted a little bit longer than we had hoped, I think we’ve made a really good decision in hiring Kim Tolbert.”
