‘End of an era.’ Durham City Manager Tom Bonfield announces retirement.
Longtime Durham City Manager Tom Bonfield will retire effective Sept. 30, he told city leaders Sunday night.
“I am satisfied and happy with my work in public service for over 42 years (35 as a City Manager) and have come to acknowledge and accept, that for a variety of personal and professional reasons, it is time to retire as Durham City Manager,” Bonfield stated in a memorandum to the mayor and City Council.
Bonfield was hired in 2008, when he was the city manager of Pensacola, Fla. He was Durham’s fourth manager in 10 years.
“This is the end of an era,” City Councilman Mark-Anthony Middleton said Monday. “Tom has been a stabilizing force and presence of professionalism and professional demeanor through some of the toughest times in the city.”
Bonfield succeeded Patrick Baker, who officially became city manager in 2005. Baker had succeeded Marcia Conner, who resigned under fire in 2004, and Lamont Ewell, who arrived in 1997 and left for San Diego in 2000.
“The city was somewhat leaderless and drifting, and we knew we had to do something,” said former City Councilman Eugene Brown, who served on council from 2003 to 2015.
In interviews, Brown and others said Bonfield implemented long-term financial planning that is paying off today as the city faces less revenue and additional needs due to COVID-19.
WalletHub recently ranked the city of Durham fifth on a list of best-run cities in America. Bonfield played a key part in building a city that earns such recognition regularly, current and former leaders said.
In age group at risk for coronavirus
In his memo, Bonfield wrote that being city manager requires a daily commitment and often evening and weekends away from family. He hopes to recapture some of that time with his wife, three children and three grandchildren.
In addition, his age — Bonfield turned 65 in May — puts him in a high-risk age group for COVID-19, he noted.
As a leader of the city, it is imperative that the manager transition back from the current virtual world to engage with employees and residents, he wrote.
“It is likely that hesitancies of my higher risk exposure will continue to limit the necessities of the job,” Bonfield wrote.
The challenges Durham now faces — COVID-19, restoring fiscal stability, implementing racial-equity and future public-safety initiatives — will take longer to meet than he expected to stay in the job, he wrote.
In an interview Monday, Bonfield said he wrestled with helping to formulate new policies he believes in, but also approaching retirement and having to hand them off to someone else when the time came to enact them.
“It just didn’t feel right to me,” he said.
‘By far the best,’ says former mayor
Bonfield led Durham through major administrative and political transitions, community leaders said.
He was the right person to hire, said former Mayor Bill Bell, who retired in 2017 after 16 years in city office and 26 years before that on the Board of County Commissioners.
“I have worked with a lot of managers, both on the county side and the city side, and he is by far the best, “ Bell said.
Mayor Steve Schewel called Bonfield a “giant in the history of the city.”
“He brought us out of the economic recession and into a tremendous period of prosperity,” Schewel said.
Bonfield was open to listening, rarely took sides and had a knack for finding talented staff, other current and former elected leaders said.
“If he doesn’t agree, he will let you know, but not in a bombastic way,” Brown said.
Schewel expects an interim city manager to be appointed, followed by a national search.
Brought new police chief to city
In Durham’s form of government, the manager runs the city’s day-to-day operations, answering to the mayor and council. The manager recommends an annual budget and is responsible for hiring and firing of most city workers,
In 2015, Bonfield forced the resignation of then Police Chief Jose Lopez, amid community concerns about police bias and alleged racial profiling.
In general, Bonfield said he was concerned about rising crime, poor relations between the police and community, and low employee morale.
In 2016, after community interviews and input, he announced Atlanta Deputy Police Chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis would become the city’s next chief.
‘Old school’ meets progressive push
Nia Wilson runs the community-building organization SpiritHouse that is part of a coalition pushing for changes in policing. She said she appreciated that Bonfield listened and was engaged in the conversation about concerns about Lopez’s leadership.
“I feel like when he realized we were at an impasse that was impossible to get past, he did what we needed him to do, which was to ask the chief to step down,” Wilson said.
Wilson said she saw Bonfield as coming from “an old-school, kind of conservative city manager position.”
Over the years, proposals pushed by progressive community groups like SpiritHouse and the FADE (Fostering Alternatives to Drug Enforcement) Coalition challenged him to move differently, she said.
“I think to the best of his ability he did that,” Wilson said.
Wilson did say the selection process for a new police chief could have included more of the people most affected by violence. She also wished Bonfield would have taken more risks, such as spending more of the city’s fund balance to help Durham’s poorest residents.
“My wish for any manager would be that they are willing to take the risks to make sure the most vulnerable community members get everything that they need,” she said. “That is not happening in Durham, even now.”
New City Council
All the council members in office when Bonfield was hired have stepped down or lost re-election amid a push to bring more progressive policing, budgeting and other reforms to Durham.
The change put Bonfield in a position last year in which the council rejected his and Davis’ budget request to hire more officers. The debate split the council 4-3.
In a rare public disagreement with a City Council member, in January Bonfield took issue with an USA Today opinion piece co-written by Mayor Pro Tem Jillian Johnson.
Her op-ed was based on a study by Local Progress and the Center for Popular Democracy, which evaluated 12 cities’ police department policies on working with federal immigration law enforcement, use of force, and independent oversight. The News & Observer reported.
The op-ed said Durham has one of the worst records in the country when it comes to use of force.
In his response, Bonfield said in a memo to Johnson that those statements are incorrect and defame the Durham Police Department.
Accomplishments, disappointments
Bonfield said he is most proud of the city’s very capable staff.
Durham has been recognized in the state and nationally for its strategic leadership, financial planning and innovation.
“We have without question, in my mind and a lot of people’s minds, the top staff in any city of North Carolina,” he said.
Bonfield said his biggest disappointment and frustration has been the city’s ongoing problems with violent crime.
When he started, we could receive call after call in the middle of the night about another homicide.
“I would just shake my head,” he said. “I felt like that was something we were always trying to find a solution around.”
And now, in the final months on the job, he said, the city is experiencing a 40% increase in aggravated assaults involving guns.
“It’s been probably the overriding frustration that I have felt sometimes, many times, helpless about,” he said. “It is something that I have thought about every day that I am here, and will continue to think about even as a resident.”
This story was originally published August 3, 2020 at 10:33 AM.
