Falls Church City Council members are hoping to have a new city manager ready to go just when their current one retires in just over five months.
Council members at a March 25 government-operations committee meeting outlined general plans and a hoped-for timetable in finding a successor to Wyatt Shields.
Shields, who has been Falls Church’s top city staffer since 2007, announced March 24 he would be retiring in early September.
At the meeting, Council members seemed to informally settle on hiring the executive-recruiting firm Raftelis to conduct the search. Formal action on a contract will occur in early April.
By mid-April, city officials hope to have settled on the wording of a job description, launching the search shortly thereafter. While planning for a national search, Council members did not rule out the possibility of hiring an internal candidate.
If all goes according to plan, the initial vetting of candidates would occur in May and June, with Council members interviewing semifinalists in mid-summer and a final selection made by late July or early August.
Leaders are still deciding how to solicit and act on input from the public and city staff.
“I’d like to give the public a chance to at least voice their opinions and hear what they have to say,” Council member Arthur Agin said.
Council members tentatively scheduled the April 8 mayor’s planning meeting to hear from the public. Community members also can weigh in by writing to Council members or appearing during the public-comment periods at Council meetings.
Council member Justine Underhill said she hoped city staff would be made to “feel empowered” to have their views heard. It’s likely those comments will be solicited by Raftelis on a confidential basis.
The clear preference of Council members at the specially called March 25 meeting was to choose a new manager by mid-summer, so he or she could give notice — if working outside the city — and be ready to take over after Shields’ last day.
“Time is of the essence,” Council member Laura Downs said.
Downs, who previously served on the School Board, said that body had taken about 18 months in selecting its most recent superintendent.
“We don’t have that kind of time,” she said.
There’s no requirement that a permanent city manager be in place when Shields departs, Underhill reminded her colleagues.
“If we’re not super thrilled with anybody, we can just have an interim city manager,” she said.
Shields himself was initially tapped as acting city manager in July 2006 while serving as assistant city manager. He got the job permanently in January 2007.
Shields told Council members his preference is to continue running city operations until his planned retirement on Friday, Sept. 4, without a successor being on the premises before his departure.
“I’m not a big fan of overlap,” he said. “That’s confusing to the organization and sort of awkward for everybody.”
The city manager said he would take his lead from Council members on how involved to be in helping select and interact with his eventual successor.
“I could either do nothing, if that’s what you would prefer, or I will assist as you direct,” Shields said.
He pledged to be available by phone or other means to answer any questions as his eventual successor settles in.
Newest city park gets a name: City Council members on March 23 voted unanimously to name a future park at 604 S. Oak Street as “Firefly Forest.”
The city purchased the property in 2019 and demolished existing structures a year later. Construction on the park project is slated to begin soon, with completion set for next summer.
City officials received more than 100 naming suggestions from the public, as well as 13 from students at nearby Oak Street Elementary School. A number of advisory bodies also made suggestions.
During an earlier work session, “Fellowship Park” and “Hidden Harvest Park” had received some interest from Council members as potential names. Members of the public also promoted a name that honored Barbara Cram, a business and civic leader who died in 2020.
As the name that won out suggests, the area where the park is located is seen as a safe haven for fireflies. In addition to Firefly Forest, similar suggested names along the same lines included Firefly Commons, Firefly Grove, Firefly Hollow, Firefly Park and Firefly Forest Park.
With the name now confirmed, the next step is starting construction.
“We look forward to the groundbreaking,” Mayor Letty Hardi said at the March 23 Council meeting.
While known to those living around the site as 604 S. Oak Street, the park site actually consists of seven separate, small parcels, each with its own street address.
The city is currently in the process of consolidating the lots into a single parcel, which is expected to have the address 500 S. Oak Street.
