That’s not Dallas. Draft to recruit a new city manager shows wrong skyline

Dallas wants to send out recruiting materials to attract candidates for a new city manager next month. But the search firm hired by the city to lead the headhunting must ensure it advertises the right city first.
Several City Council members were puzzled Monday after reviewing a seven-page draft of the job ad brochure. The cover displayed downtown skyscrapers they couldn’t quite place.
“I hate this photo. I don’t think it’s representative of Dallas,” said council member Cara Mendelsohn during an ad hoc committee on administrative affairs meeting. “And I had to look at it for quite a few minutes before I realized it actually was the city.”
It wasn’t.
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The cover page from firm Baker Tilly says “City of Dallas” and displays the city’s logo at the top. But a reverse image search of the photo shows that it features towers part of downtown Houston’s skyline, including the Gulf Building, One Shell Plaza building and 71-story Wells Fargo Plaza building.
City Council members identified a new cover photo that was “identifiably Dallas” among a series of other suggested edits for the final version of the booklet.
“To me, this looks old and dated,” said council member Jesse Moreno, representing parts of downtown Dallas. “We have one of the best skylines in the country, and I think we need to be able to highlight that.”
Other pictures inside the booklet had Dallas markers like City Hall, Klyde Warren Park and the downtown Dallas skyline.
“The first page is a cover page, kind of like the headline,” Edward Williams, a public sector executive recruitment director at Baker Tilly, told the council during the meeting. “The idea here is that people see something they find of interest, and it captures their attention and invites them to continue reading and hopefully apply at the end of that review.”
Nicole Berkeland, a Baker Tilly spokeswoman, told The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday that the firm appreciated the council feedback and is “working with the city to update the cover to reflect the unique identity of Dallas”.
“The selection was sourced from a trusted image library that had tagged the image as representing Dallas,” she said.
Berkeland said the firm used Adobe Stock to find the image and Getty Images confirmed the same picture as Dallas.
Dallas is seeking to find a successor to former city manager T.C. Broadnax, who announced his resignation in February, left in May and is now Austin’s city manager. Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, previously a deputy city manager and Broadnax’s chief of staff, is Dallas’ interim city manager.
The City Council also in May approved a one-year, more than $134,000 contract with Baker Tilly to lead the search for a new city top executive.
City Council members, who ultimately will hire the next city manager, hope to name a successor before the end of the year.