Mayor Resigns to apply for high-paying city position

Whether former Colonial Heights Mayor C. Scott Davis’ recent resignation from his position as mayor and city council member is the first step in his path to becoming the new Director of Planning and Community Development only time will tell. By appearances, it would seem that the whole thing is a done deal—a fait accompli.

Davis rightly ought to have removed himself from those two positions if he is seeking the Director’s position. But no matter how you look at it, positing him as the interim Director during the time between former Director George Schanzenbacher’s retirement and the completion of the city staff’s recruitment process gives Davis a leg up over any other candidate.

Certainly Davis has the right to apply for the position. No one would ever deny him that right. However, to the layman, it seems as if the city has already set its sights on who they want to fill the opening. They even gave him the interim position.

It does make one pause to think that other potential candidates might not apply, since there appears to be an inside track. It happens all the time. The position is put out for anyone to apply to, but deep down inside the hirer already knows who they are going to hire.

The city will have to go to great lengths to ensure that Davis is the top candidate during the selection process. Otherwise the public at large is going to assume the worst. And installing Davis as the interim only leads to negative speculation among the citizenry.

None of that’s to say that Davis is not a good candidate or in fact the best candidate. It would be hard to argue that he does not have the betterment of the city in mind; after all he has been mayor for five years and a council member even longer.

No one would deny that he has shown great leadership over the years. Typically these positions are advertised in nationwide searches. They are handled similar to how communities go about hiring a new City Manager.

On the city’s behalf, City Manager Thomas Mattis said the “city staff will utilize a unique screening process, independent of the city manager, to consider all candidates.” But there are subtleties to any process and the staff’s familiarity with Davis will be hard to overcome for anyone from outside the community.

It’s simply the theory of plus one. Plus one is what happens when you finish second in such a hiring process, only to be beaten out by the owner’s son, a well-liked current employee, or in this instance the former mayor. It’s difficult not to think the deck is stacked or the dice are loaded.

In many cases the drudgery of the application process is such that some people may look at the situation and not bother to apply at all. And, even if Davis is qualified and the best candidate, there will be those who point to his close association with the city and his time on city council and see this as nothing more than a big payoff.

However the process works out it is going to be in murky water. There are parts of the process so far that challenge the sniff test.