When the City of Lawrence announced the finalists for the city manager position, community members took to social media with concerns about diversity and potential controversies. Wednesday’s public meet and greet with the finalists answered questions about how commissioners winnowed down the applicant pool.
A city announcement Friday highlighted five finalists for city manager: David Vela, Joe Fivas, Joseph (Joe) Lessard, Majed Al-Ghafry and Michael Kovacs. The city made a follow-up announcement Tuesday that Vela withdrew from the running.
Residents were quick to notice that all of the finalists are men and a majority are white, and posted their concerns on Facebook and other online forums. Many people came, engaged and ready with questions, to the Carnegie Building for Wednesday’s meet and greet with the four remaining candidates.
The crowd packed into a single room and some folks struggled to hear as the candidates introduced themselves. Then, speed-dating-style, Fivas, Lessard, Al-Ghafry and Kovacs were stationed at tables while attendees walked around and asked questions.
To kick off the event, Doug Thomas gave the crowd a rundown of the recruitment process. Thomas is the the executive vice president of executive recruitment/leadership development with Strategic Government Resources, a recruitment firm that the city contracted for a not-to-exceed price of $28,419 to help guide the search.
Thomas said later in an interview that in any search process, he wants to be transparent with candidates about a municipality and its growth areas. He said he had a running joke with attendees for the night: usually, SGR identifies four or five community challenges.
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“Lawrence — of the close to 300 searches I’ve done with SGR — Lawrence had a full page,” he said. “You have a lot of things at play here, and you have a very dynamic community.”
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A six-page recruitment document notes challenges and opportunities for Lawrence including economic development, growth management, the connection between government and higher education, affordability, intergovernmental relationship and partners, and a major strategic plan update.
The document also notes Lawrence’s highly engaged community and stakeholders.
“As such, a City Manager who is committed to transparency, trust, and accountability, with an authentic willingness to engage with residents, neighborhood groups, and community stakeholders, and assist the City Commission in navigating this landscape, will be successful in Lawrence,” the document reads.
Thomas said SGR sourced 60 total applicants from 23 states, which he thought was a reasonable number for how unique Lawrence is and how many people have experiences with cities this size. From there, commissioners selected 15 semifinalists they felt were fit for the job.
Those semifinalists completed extensive questionnaires and submitted prerecorded statements addressing items like their interest in the position and their management styles.
Thomas said SGR also had candidates “self-disclose anything in their background that might be a concern or controversy.” The firm did a media search on news articles and candidates’ personal social media to understand potential controversies, what types of posts they make, and related information.
Ultimately, Lawrence commissioners selected the five candidates who made it to the final round.
City commissioners confident in search
“We don’t make that selection, but our goal was to get as diverse a pool of candidates as possible for the commission to choose from,” Thomas said after the event. “We think we did our best to make sure they have a wide range of candidates to consider, and I respect the fact, as elected officials, they get to pick who they feel is the most qualified for the position, that’s what they’ve been elected to do.”
“Basically, you’re saying that of the 15 candidates it’s … the commission that picked five white men,” one resident said to Thomas as attendees milled about Wednesday.
City Commissioner Amber Sellers said Wednesday that she did not share the public’s concerns about the diversity of the finalists. She also specified that not all candidates were white. Al-Ghafry is a candidate of color.
“We actually had a very richly diverse pool of candidates, racially as well as gender-wise,” she said.
Sellers said that in some cases, candidates were finalists for positions with other municipalities and took jobs elsewhere.
She said she was also candid with her fellow commissioners when considering applications. She discussed how candidates of color and women might have different career pathways because they don’t always have the same opportunities, so “this is not an apples to apples comparison.”
Mayor Brad Finkeldei also said he was comfortable with the decision-making process.
“We had a broad pool, and, you know, our job as the five commissioners were to select the … five best, we thought they were good for the community, and that’s what we did,” he said.
Sellers said commissioners sought a city manager who was able to work in a diverse community with competing interests and strong civic engagement.
“We wanted someone that had a full knowledge and understanding of economic development and growth, and how to do that,” she said.
She said they also looked for candidates with a “healthy understanding” of the relationship between housing, economic development and fiscal responsibilities, demonstrated by their record of work.
“I’m confident that one of our future city managers is in this room,” she said.
Curveballs for the candidates
Many Lawrencians Wednesday vetted their city manager candidates by asking direct questions about transgender and queer rights; city government’s relationship to Immigration and Customs Enforcement; how to handle the city’s evergrowing debt; and if they would lower property taxes.
People also came prepared to ask about the skeletons in the candidates’ closets.
One attendee asked candidate Fivas about an investigation that the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation did into his work as the town manager in Indian Trails, North Carolina. He was in that position from 2010 to 2015 and has been in a stint as city manager in Cleveland, Tennessee since 2016.
Fivas said the government of Indian Trails built a $170,000 playground, which the city council voted on.
“There are some people that did not like our success in parks and recreation,” he said. “They were able to convince the authorities that there was something that went wrong with the bidding process.”
North Carolina’s SBI investigation yielded nothing, and the DA sent Fivas a clean bill of bidding health, he said.
As Thomas fielded one-on-one questions about dirt on candidates, he pointed to Fivas’ investigation as an example.
“If you are a city manager, in today’s environment, it is more common that there are going to be some level of controversy if you are doing something in a job,” he said.
Candidates who don’t “push the envelope” are less likely to have online controversies, Thomas said.
Thomas confirmed that all of the final candidates underwent a background check and had no evidence of illegal, immoral or unethical dealings. They are also members of the International City/County Management Association, which is the arbiter that maintains a code of conduct for their profession.
Holly Krebs, of the Coalition for Collaborative Governance, circulated research the group did on the candidates on Facebook earlier this week. That research included the type of cities they’ve served in previously, their past salaries and any potential controversies.
Krebs was one of eight people on a citizens panel for the hiring process, where she learned more about all of the candidates from a 150-page document that the city gave her in a closed session. Between that experience and Wednesday night’s meet and greet, she said many of her concerns about the candidates were assuaged.
She said most of the information the coalition put together was from a Google search.
“When you do those types of searches, you find the stories that rise to the top that have been more controversial, and in local government, there is bound to be controversy, that city council members disagree with each other, they disagree with leadership,” she said.
She also learned that many city managers only stay in a position for five to seven years because changing tides in city leadership mean a manager could be popular with one administration and disliked by the next.
“I would say I have an understanding that that’s where the conflicts arose, and that those are legitimate and normal governmental processes,” Krebs said.
Commissioners will appoint their chosen candidate Friday morning, after two full days of tours and interviews that will continue Thursday.
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Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at [email protected].
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