Nearly 70 people applied for Columbus police chief vacancy, city officials reported Tuesday, but only about half of them meet the minimum requirements.
Human Resources Director Pat Mitchell said 67 applications were received by the Sept. 19 deadline, and three came in after the deadline.
Mitchell said 35 applicants meet the minimum requirements. None of the three latecomers met the minimum criteria for the post.
“We’re looking at someone who has been a chief or an assistant chief or a higher ranking officer that has experience with budgets and managing people,” Mitchell said after a special-call executive session at City Hall in which the hiring committee discussed the applicants.
“We’re looking for people skills, and we’re looking at innovation.”
Four of the applicants were in-house, and one person applied from Caledonia. The rest of the applicants were out of state, Mitchell said.
Mayor Keith Gaskin declined to release the names of the in-house applicants.
The city is replacing former chief Fred Shelton, who retired on Aug. 15. He announced his intention to retire on July 12, hours before a special call city council meeting to discuss his job performance.
Columbus City Council appointed Assistant Chief Doran Johnson to serve as interim chief, effective Aug. 16. He said at the time he would apply for the permanent post.
The city council appointed a 10-person search committee Aug. 16. The members are: Gaskin, Ward 2 Councilman Joseph Mickens, Ward 3 Councilman Rusty Greene, Ward 5 Councilman Stephen Jones, Chief Operations Officer Jammie Garrett, Mitchell, former Columbus Police Department Chief Pete Bowen, District Attorney Scott Colom, public defender Amanda Meadows and Civil Service Commission member Rita Felton.
Gaskin said the committee would meet weekly going forward.
“Our goal is to have a final decision no later than the end of November,” Gaskin said.
Gaskin said committee members will come back next week with their personal top-10 list of preferred candidates.
“We will probably quickly begin doing interviews,” he said. “We’ve discussed starting with Zoom meetings to get the field down to a smaller group that we will bring to the city. One of the reasons we’re doing that is because we don’t pay for people to travel in, and we have candidates from all around the country.”
Gaskin said he was pleased with the quality of the applicants.
“I feel very good,” he said. “We all agreed in the meeting that this is an important decision, maybe one of the most important we will make for the city.”
He praised the search committee members for their commitment.
“We had a couple of people already turn in their top 10 today,” he said. “I was very impressed how serious all the committee members have taken the search process thus far. We’ve got a really good search committee.”
The salary range for the new chief will be between $74,000 and $90,000. The pay was previously about $72,000.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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