Port Arthur had a new city manager Tuesday night when the City Council members left their executive session on City Hall’s fourth floor. That’s what Councilman Harold Doucet thought.

By the time councilmembers reached the fifth floor, the agreement fell apart.

Doucet said Wednesday that the executive session ended with a ballot that ranked the four final candidates for the city manager job in councilmembers’ order of preference. Candidates were:

• Natasha Henderson, a management consultant and former city manager in Flint, Michigan.
• David Strahl, former city administrator for the city of O’Fallon, Missouri.

• Hani Tohme, a professional engineer and Port Arthur’s former director of public services.

• Henrietta Turner, city manager in Floresville, Texas.

The job pays in the $140,000 to $170,000 range.

Councilmembers had agreed on a schedule to choose a new city manager and agreed on a means by which to choose — by ranking the candidates. Tohme and Henderson had three votes each, Doucet said, and Strahl had the seventh.

By totaling all votes in the ranking system, however, Tohme narrowly finished ahead of the field and should have been chosen, Doucet said, under the guidelines the councilmembers themselves set. It took minutes to blow the agreement up.

“We said the person who came out on top gets hired,” Doucet said of the councilmembers’ agreement. “We said points, not first-place votes.”

By the time councilmembers reached the fifth-floor council chambers, he said, at least one vote changed. When Councilwoman Charlotte Moses offered a motion to reopen the search, members Doucet, Scott and later Kaprina Frank expressed shock at what had happened.

“I am just totally confused. We had a process,” said Frank, who served on the council committee to review the pool of 18 applicants for the job.

Moses, Mayor Derrick Freeman, Mayor Pro Tem Thomas Kinlaw and Councilman Cal Jones voted to reopen the search. Doucet, Scott and Frank voted against, opting to stick to the original bargain.

Doucet said up until the board met for Tuesday night’s scheduled council meeting, councilmembers had followed the plan “to a T,” collecting applications, choosing a council committee to winnow the list down to four finalists, conducting public interviews and meeting to choose a final applicant.

He said he was troubled when the council did not take up the final selection within days of the Feb. 27 interviews, which were held at City Hall. The interim city manager, Harvey Robinson, said he would leave soon, and the city is now without leadership over the water and street departments — key services.

Last week, councilmembers met but did not reach consensus on a final candidate. Tuesday, they resumed the discussions and voted by anonymous paper ballots.

“I understand that we are all entitled to our views,” Doucet said. “You’re not going to win every battle. But when you don’t get your way, you don’t go off and do something different.”

Doucet said that after the paper ballots were cast and counted and before the City Council reconvened, Moses wanted more information about who voted for whom and how many first-place votes candidates had. But Doucet said the agreement was to choose the finalists with the most points based on a scale of 5 points for first, 4 for second, down to 2 for fourth, not for the finalist with the most first-place votes.

Doucet said Robinson had lobbied in favor of Henderson; Robinson contended that Tohme did not meet the qualifications. Robinson could not be reached for comment.

Further, Doucet said, when he, Scott and Frank left the executive session, Robinson had said he would leave his interim job Friday. From the dais, minutes later, Freeman said Robinson had agreed to stay on, to the apparent surprise of Doucet, Scott and Frank.

Freeman said Wednesday that, going forward, the city would seek additional candidates to add to the 18 who have applied. Some of the 18 might be reconsidered for the job, including those who were not chosen Tuesday. Adding to the initial pool might take 30 days, he said.

Freeman said he still believes councilmembers can choose a qualified candidate with consensus, and that they would be able to put their spirited Tuesday discussions behind them.