Kimberly Tolbert Named Dallas City Manager
After a topsy-turvy nearly year-long quest, the Dallas City Council finalized the search and named Kim Tolbert City Manager.
Tolbert, who has held the interim office since May 2024, beat out two other candidates after Council members voted 13-2 to officially give her the job. Council members Paul Ridley and Cara Mendelsohn voted against the contract.
Council Member Gay Donnell Willis said today that she wasn’t well-acquainted with Tolbert when Council voted to name her Interim City Manager, but said she “was quickly impressed with the strategic, orderly, communicative and expeditious manner she brought to the role.”
“She caught my attention with an immediate 100-day plan on some of Dallas’ most pressing issues (homelessness, pension funding, public safety, advancing the new Economic Development Corporation, among others) that Council received regular updates on. Almost all of the goals were delivered on time, and her next phase of projects is underway,” said Willis.
Tolbert will earn a salary of $450,000, according to the motion voted on by city officials.
Willis spoke about the desire she had heard from some residents to make the City Manager hire from the private sector. “Not many applied,” said the District 13 Council Member, adding, “probably because you have 15 bosses (Mayor and City Council), instead of holding a team meeting in a conference room and getting to a solution, you have to conduct business according to the Texas Open Meetings Act, on public display, and have your actions covered by the media, and not be compensated as others who have $5 billion budgets, and a land valuation of $154 billion, as Dallas does. That said, the Council worked together and with Kim to negotiate a contract that falls far short of the 10s of millions in salary and benefits a $154B-value company would earn, but that is fair based on comparable cities, the scope of the job and where we believe the City Manager can take the city in terms of growth and efficiency.”
Tolbert will become the first Black woman to serve as Dallas’s City Manager.
A BIG, demanding job requiring a plethora of skills. Good choice!