Fort Smith board to interview four for city administrator job

Fort Smith

by Michael Tilley ([email protected]) December 2, 2025 9:30 pm 1,240 views 

Of the seven Fort Smith city administrator candidates on a list provided to the Fort Smith Board of Directors, only two have experience managing a city the size of Fort Smith, with one of those being Acting Fort Smith City Administrator Jeff Dingman.

Of the 43 applications received online for the city’s top job, only eight had top municipal leadership experience. Human Resources Director Eric Garvin was tasked by the board to create a list of the most qualified for the job among those who applied.

Following is the short list of candidates, listed in alphabetical order, that were provided to the board to consider during the executive session.

  • Dingman, acting Fort Smith city administrator
  • Matthew Harline, former manager, Villa Park, Ill., population of about 22,000
  • Dean Johnson, former mayor, Puyallup, Wash., population of 42,255
  • Mayor David Rieder Jr., Clarksville mayor, population of about 10,000
  • Scot Rigby, former city manager, city of Edmond, Okla., population of about 99,000
  • Rod Sweetman, chief operating officer, AG Witt LLC, a consulting firm
  • Kelcey Young, former city manager of Pinole, Calif., population of 19,022

Board members on Tuesday (Dec. 2) entered into executive session following the regular meeting to discuss the candidate list. Following the executive session, Director Lee Kemp made a motion to conduct interviews on Dec. 15 with Dingman, Johnson, Harline and Rigby. Director Kevin Settle seconded the motion and it was approved unanimously.

As part of the motion by Kemp, the city’s human resources office will conduct background reviews of the four candidates before scheduling the interviews.

Rigby is the only applicant other than Dingman with experience in a city the population similar to Fort Smith. Rigby was fired by the Edmond city council following the council’s Jan. 14 meeting. He now leads Rigby & Associates, an Edmond-based consulting firm.

The candidate list provided to the Fort Smith Board of Directors.

Kemp has said the board could vote to use a search firm if it is unable to find a suitable candidate. On Tuesday he told Talk Business & Politics that he has not ruled out stepping back and using a firm to conduct a national search.

“Yes, a possibility of a search is there,” Kemp said. “But we were advised to interview these candidates and decide where we are with these candidates before going to a national search. … We don’t want to settle anywhere along the way if we don’t feel like we’ve got the right (candidate), then we may need to open it up.”

The Fort Smith board on Aug. 19 voted to have the city’s human resources department post the job on the city’s website on Sept. 2, and keep the application window open through Oct. 16. The board decided to avoid the cost of an executive search firm and focus on conducting an online search. The board also named Kemp as the board’s liaison with the city administrator search.

That action came more than eight months after the board fired Carl Geffken as city administrator in December 2024. Geffken was hired to be the city administrator in March 2016 with a salary of $175,000. His annual salary when he was fired was $204,513. Dingman was named acting city administrator following Geffken’s dismissal and continues in that role. Dingman also was on the short list of candidates when Geffken was hired in 2016.