HUBER HEIGHTS — The search for a new city manager in Huber Heights is raising questions about favoritism, incompetence, and racism.
Huber Heights City Council is still searching for a new city manager 15 months after the last manager left and the drawn-out search is leading to dueling news conference and unexplained council meeting absences.
The Huber heights mayor claims the search was delayed for eight months because some council members felt an election would change the people sitting on council. That didn’t happen but it also didn’t speed up the search and now there are two distinct sides of council that are not cooperating with each other, and the NAACP said residents are reaching out to them with their concerns about the search for a city manager.
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It appears that there are four finalists selected from a group of more than 30 applicants.
The mayor held a news conference to claim some members of council deliberately didn’t show up so votes to offer contracts can’t be taken.
Glenn Otto, Huber Heights Council Member, said, “Government is messy. These are maneuvers taken by people constantly.”
Otto is one of four council members that the mayor calls minority of council. But Otto insists council is evenly decided on the manager search, four a piece and his side believes the mayor, who would break a tie, is pushing for an internal candidate that they think is the least qualified of the finalists.
Almost no one has received a straight up or down vote, including the only minority candidate of the four finalists, Gerald Smith.
Derrick Foward, Dayton NAACP Chapter President said, “They had a qualified candidate in Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith was put at the bottom of the totem pole with the most qualifications.”
Foward said he got involved after calls from concerned Huber Heights residents. He said some council members appeared to be concerned about so-called job-hopping by Gerald Smith and by a Facebook post he made in 2020 regarding the death of George Floyd.
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Foward said he worries about potential bias and claims Smith has not been directly asked about that Facebook post.
“I’m glad you brought that up Mike and he has not,” Foward said,
Jeff Gore, Huber Heights Mayor said, “Thinking that just because Mr. Smith is African American is the reason that he wasn’t brought up and forwarded as a finalist just isn’t true and I don’t know how to be more clear about that,”
Gore claims council learned that Smith has been asked to leave his last job, in part because he was looking for other jobs while on the clock. That leaves Huber Heights still trying to bring any of their finalists forward for a vote to offer the city manager position.
The council had a special meeting tonight that had nothing to do with the city manager hiring process. The next regularly scheduled meeting is July 11 and there’s no indication if the city manager search or a vote on a candidate will be on the agenda.
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