By Paul Giblin and D.S. Woodfill | The Arizona Republic
Glendale promoted interim Police Chief Debora Black and three other interim department heads to fill vacancies in some of the city’s top positions Tuesday.
The vacancies constituted an impressive who’s who of non-employees: the police chief, the city engineer, the Neighborhood and Human Services executive director, and the Human Resources and Risk Management executive director.
Interim City Manager Dick Bowers filled the spots without conducting national or even regional searches, which is somewhat unusual, particularly for the police chief’s job.
Black and the others had all served as interim heads for about a year, with the expectation that the eventual permanent city manager would make the decisions about whom to put into the permanent department-head positions.
Glendale is nearing the end of a national search for a city manager to succeed Ed Beasley, who retired from municipal service about a year ago.
Promoting Black and the other interim heads will help steady city operations right away, Bowers said.
