The N&O and Herald-Sun are both reporting that Deputy City Manager Ted Voorhees may be on his way to the metro D.C. area, where he's one of two finalists for the Gaithersburg, Md. city manager post.
The 60,000-resident city is on the fringes of the D.C. area and is a popular bedroom community for District employees. Voorhees will be in the Maryland town on June 17 to meet with members of the public as part of the interview process. Durham's deputy was a finalist for the top post in Ft. Worth, Tx. earlier this year.
Voorhees has been a steady hand in Durham city government, and his hiring remains one of the comparative bright spots in Marcia Conner's administration. Although the Indy's brief article by Lisa Sorg yesterday called out the alt-weekly's criticism of comments that Voorhees made at a Duke-Durham drought forum this winter as, oddly, its only analysis of the deputy's tenure at Durham, Voorhees has generally gotten along well with citizen-activists and has, to my mind, provided a dash of seasoning and experience to the decision-making processes in a number of areas.
Frankly, during Council work sessions I've tended to find Voorhees one of the few senior city officials (along with, notably, Alan DeLisle and Steve Medlin) who can provide consistent, reasoned responses to a panoply of Council questions. Staff like this know their stuff and have answers at the ready -- which is probably why they're likely to be frequent targets for headhunters, one surmises.
As Barry's noted before, it's rare to be promoted to a city manager job from within, so it's no surprise that Voorhees would be looking to move on; doing so concurrently with the arrival of a new city manager in Tom Bonfield also allows the latter to build his leadership team. Still, Voorhees would leave behind decently-sized shoes to fill in the City administration.
It's just a matter of time before someone picks him off. He was well-liked and respected in Wilmington. While he has his detractors, he has also done well here.
A loss for us.
Posted by: Tar Heelz | June 14, 2008 at 01:19 PM
Could we just agree to a swap, you get Tom Bonfield and we get Ted Voorhees? He sounds pretty rock solid. They're both ICMA Credentialed Managers so it would be a pretty even trade. My Aunt Mary lives in Gaithersburg and I have spent a lot of time there. It's an OK place but nothing like Pensacola. And he would get an office on the 7th floor looking out onto the Gulf of Mexico. If he looks to the west over towards NAS Pensacola he could watch the Blue Angels practice in the mornings. Did I mention he gets to run an airport, a sea port and a natural gas company too!
Posted by: Christopher J. Lewis | June 16, 2008 at 08:24 PM