Interim DeKalb County CEO Lee May will use a 3-member panel to help him decide who should temporarily fill his seat on the county commission.
Who those three people are remains open. But their job will be to winnow down applicants and commission recommendations for the District 5 seat to two finalists, according to a memo from May dated Tuesday that lays out the process.
May will recommend one of the two finalists to the commisison in the next month and a half. The county commission must approve his selection for the person to be seated.
“I believe we must act in a swift, thorough and deliberative manner,” May wrote.
The technical question of whether May could serve as both a commissioner and interim executive had been a concern for some other commissioners and residents. Once he assumed the interm CEO position last summer May has not voted or otherwise acted as a commissioner.
As first reported in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in February, state and local law did not allow for an interim commissioner.
Senate Bill 367 created a new law in the recent legislative session allowing DeKalb to appoint an interim commissioner to represent the south DeKalb district that had been May’s on the seven-member commission.
May plans to advertise for the job in the next 30 days in several small newspapers that serve that part of the county. He is also taking candidate names from other commissioners.
Commissioners have said they would like to discuss the matter in committee before a vote is taken.
Whoever is selected will represent 145,000 county residents. A main focus for the job will be reviewing and voting on zoning issues, one of the matters where the board traditionally defers to a local commissioner’s recommendations.
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