Cutler Bay council members hope to name a permanent Town Manager by May.

The Town Council already has approved and posted a job announcement on its website, asking qualified candidates to submit their resumes and applications to the Town Clerk’s office.

Interested candidates have until March 15 to submit resumes and applications.

The council has enlisted the help of a group of former city and county managers to help evaluate candidates.

The Range Riders, a program of the Florida City and County Management Association, will assist the council by recommending a list of candidates to the council for consideration. The group provides free services to help counties and cities hire managers.

According the coordinator of the program, Kurt Bressner, the Range Riders can assist counties and cities in writing a profile for the position, as well as placing advertisements, and helping develop interview questions.

“We do not conduct background checks by choice because we don’t have the resources for that,” said Bressner.

After the March deadline, the town clerk will send all the resumes and applications to the Range Riders, who will later recommend 10 candidates.

After sending the list of 10 semifinalists to the clerk, the council will consider the list of candidates.

The council will hold a special meeting on April 4, where council members will be able to add candidates to the list and later narrow the list down to five people. A background check will be conducted of each of the candidates, and the results will be sent to both the clerk and Range Riders on April 27.

The Town Council will then interview the finalists and choose a new town manager on May 2. The town attorney will negotiate employment terms from May 3-8.

The new agreement will be voted on by the Town Council on May 15.

“We’ve hired managers before, clerks before, so it’s not a procedure that’s foreign to us,” said Mayor Ed MacDougall.

Back in June, the council voted 3-2 to terminate the contract of town manager Stephen Alexander without cause. Alexander was Cutler Bay’s first and only town manager since it incorporated. Some residents had complained that Alexander had grown too powerful and was unresponsive to the needs of residents.

The council later appointed public works director Ralph Casals as interim town manager. Casals said Thursday that he plans to apply for the permanent job.