Kimberly Bizor Tolbert hasn’t waited to make changes at City Hall since becoming Dallas’ interim city manager on May 2. The new boss has shaken up the organizational chart and outlined her goals for the first 100 days.
In an email to the Dallas City Council yesterday, Tolbert announced that interim Dallas Water Utilities director Sarah Standifer would change her title to permanent director. The move may be seen by many City Hall watchers as controversial, particularly those who count themselves among our city’s environmental hawks. Standifer notably was atop the department that oversaw managing the Trinity River and the watershed when environmental snafus seemed common, like a borrow pit and a drained wetland pond that attracted the attention of the state in the forest near where the Trinity Forest Golf Club was being built.
Standifer joined the city in 2002 and was appointed interim director of the city’s water utility in June 2023, when her predecessor, Terry Lowery, retired. In her email, Tolbert cited Standifer’s expertise in water and wastewater management, as well as her affiliations with the Trinity Regional Flood Board, National Waterways Conference, and Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies.
In the same email, Tolbert also announced that Emily Liu has been hired as Director of Planning and Urban Design. Liu comes from Louisville, Kentucky, where she held a similar role. Tolbert said that Liu had been with Louisville for more than a decade, with much of that time spent leading the planning department. She has also worked in Illinois and Ohio and, in 2022, became the first woman in Kentucky to be inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners. She’ll report to work in Dallas on May 20.
“Emily has broad expertise across various aspects of urban planning and design, such as long-range planning, zoning, housing, transportation, urban design, and historic preservation,” Tolbert wrote. “She was pivotal in leading Louisville’s acclaimed Zoning Reform initiative, which has been recognized as a model for other cities.”