City Council welcomes new mayor | News

Woods shared a personal story with his elevation to mayor, after the four candidates who were voted in to fill the four open seats, were sworn in, including Larry Briggs, Michael Schilling, Micah Jantz, and David Shein.

First, his grandchildren presented the gavel and sounding block, followed by a story about the family and historical significance of the items, starting with the gavel.

“I presented it to my father when he was sworn in as mayor 49 years ago. And this gavel was made by my father-in-law, George Birchall,” Woods recounted, adding it was recently dug up from storage where it long hid.

Next, he pointed to the nickel taped on the base the gavel hits, known as the sounding block. Woods said his father, as president of the City Council, was nominated to replace Mayor Richard Van Den Bosch, who passed away.

“So, then they had to choose another council president,” Woods explained. “Two names were nominated, and it came to a 4-4 tie. Back then, there were a lot of businesspeople on this panel. And they all knew each other quite well and worked together quite well.”

So, the city attorney told Woods senior it was up to him to break the tie. Not sure how to do it, someone finally suggested flipping a coin.

“My dad never carried any coins in his pocket. Probably because I stole them all,” Woods recalled, drawing a laugh from the members filling current city council chambers. “They handed him a quarter. You had to know my dad’s sense of humor. He said, ‘No, I don’t want to be known as a two-bit mayor.’”

So, somebody handed him a nickel. He flipped it and one of the two men won.

“The nickel is dated 1973. So, it’s almost 50 years ago. So, it’s in honor of when he took over as mayor. It’s important to me to have it. Pleased to have it,” Woods concluded.

Back to current business, the council unanimously approved to have current president Schilling continue in the position.

After a presentation on the state of the Dallas Area Chamber of Commerce by its President Sam Dufner, the city council discussed next steps filling out their remaining two untilled seats.

City Manager Brian Latta explained one vacancy was created with the departure of Rob Dunnum and the other Woods’ seat with his election to mayor.

“The city charter is pretty clear that the council shall fill vacancies. But outside of that, there’s no determined process. Staff is looking for guidance on how to fill those vacancies,” Latta said to the seven council members.

Schilling kicked off discussions by suggesting rather than following the trend of just appointing the next most likely person in line, the process itself should be more formal with a more thorough interview and discussion procedure.

Shein pointed out historically, the council has both appointed someone and hosted a vetting and interview process.

“Right now, we have unique opportunity, or unique problem, depending on which way you want to look at it, is we have two vacancies to fill,” Shein said. “We also have somebody in the wings who is highly qualified because he’s done it before. I’m talking about our former Mayor Brian Dalton.”

While Shein was ready to make a motion to appoint Dalton that night, the other councilors wanted to go through the full process first, then include Dalton into proceedings at the end.

Meanwhile, Biggs pointed out the two vacancies also presented the opportunity to permanently shrink the overall size of the council.

“We’ve had discussions in prior years to reduce the size of council from nine to seven . I know that requires a charter amendment. When would we have that discussion to see if that is something we would want to do?” Biggs asked. “I know we have to get an amendment into the county fairly quickly for the next election.”

Latta confirmed if the council wanted to propose a reduction in members from nine to anything less than nine, they would have to do that through the charter amendment process that requires a vote of the citizens of Dallas.

“And that would be done at an election, either May or November. To get it on the ballot by May, we would have to have a proposed ballot title to the county by early March. We’re a month and a half from getting our process completed ballot measure to the county. Not a lot of time to do that,” Latta explained.

So, the earliest would be the November election, but then it would butt up against a measure already heading to voters in the fall – the creation of a Parks & Recreation District.

“So, you may even consider to push that out to May of next year would be my recommendation,” Latta said. “It would also give you time to evaluate not only this question of the number of councilors but looking holistically at the whole charter. If you’re going to take a bit of the the charter, I would look at the whole thing and not just one topic at a time.”

Councilor Debbie Verden was amiable to the process of public solicitation for interested community members followed by an interview process.

“I was appointed through that (interview) process,” Verden said. It was much more reasonable and fair. There weren’t a whole lot of applicants at the time. But who knows with two vacancies I’d rather see a kind of pool of applicants to…”

“See what is out there?” Woods interjected.

“Yeah. It seems fair to me,” Verden agreed.

Latta recommended if the council wanted a solicitation process to give city staff from two weeks to a month.

Schilling made the motion for staff to go through solicitation process for one month.

“I think longer is better. We’d get a better group of candidates. So, one month to report back to us how many, then decide the process at that point and time, whether we whittle down from actual applications or move straight into a hearing and the interviewing as we did before. And then move into a work session afterwards and deliberate amongst ourselves. And have an actual vote in the following meeting,” Schilling mapped out.

The motion passed unanimously.