New City Manager for Celina, Celina Record

Liebman named Celina’s interim city manager Lisa Ferguson, lferguson@starlocalmedia.com Jun 15, 2016 0 The Celina City Council on Tuesday appointed Helen-Eve Liebman as interim city manager. Liebman has been the city’s director of planning and development since 2011. Mike Foreman, who had been the city manager for five years, resigned from the position June 10. “He was ready to move on,” Mayor Sean Terry said of Foreman’s departure. “Good luck to him. We hope he does good in his next endeavor.” Foreman could not be reached for comment following Tuesday’s council meeting. He had been absent from City Hall in recent weeks, which Terry said was due to the fact that he was on vacation. However, during special meetings of the City Council on May 31 and June 6, council members convened in executive session to “deliberate the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline or dismissal of a public officer or employee,” according to agendas posted on the city’s website. The city manager and marketing director positions were listed on the May 31 agenda as those being deliberated by the council. Only the city manager’s position was included on the June 6 agenda. Terry said the city is evaluating several government departments and employee positions to determine whether city staff is “spending our fiscal dollars responsibly” in advance of budget meetings scheduled in July. The city manager and marketing director “are big departments for us,” he explained, “and we just want to look and see are those being handled properly and how things are going.” Other departments will undergo similar evaluations in coming months, the mayor said. The city was unable to complete its evaluation of the city manager position, he explained, due to Foreman’s decision to resign. Liebman, who was bestowed Celina’s city government Director of the Year award in 2012 and 2015, has spent the bulk of her career as a planner. The Texas A&M University alum was senior planner for the city of Allen from 2009 through 2011. She previously owned a land-planning consulting firm in Coppell for nearly a decade, and also served as planning manager for a pair of private North Texas engineering firms. In recent years, Terry said, Liebman often assumed city manager duties in Foreman’s stead when he was away from the office. “We feel like she’s been running the city for a long time,” Terry said. Liebman also oversees other departments including Code Enforcement and is familiar with the numerous development deals in which the city is engaged. “There won’t be any catching her up to speed. She knows all the projects that are going on,” he said. “Being a planner is a tough position, especially in a growing city. Your city manager’s main function is to grow the city,” Terry said. “Helen-Eve has a great niche to bring developers and staff together to get a common goal at the end of the day.” The city will likely evaluate Liebman’s job performance later this year or early next year, Terry said, at which point she may be offered the permanent city manager position. “It’s quite an honor to be asked to lead and facilitate, and I feel like I can do it with the staff that we have,” Liebman, 52, said following the council meeting. “I’ve been involved in so many of the development decisions, and I understand how the city has been running. I’d like to continue to facilitate the council’s desires and that’s what I plan to do,” she said. “I want to make collective decisions instead of (following a) personal agenda,” Liebman said, explaining that she intends to “listen to staff, listen to residents, the City Council and move in a direction according to what they want.”