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GREENSBORO — Guilford County’s newest manager is a woman who didn’t even apply for the job: Brenda Jones Fox .

She was named county manager by a 10-1 vote after a special meeting called Thursday for commissioners to consider job applicants for the post previously held by David McNeill.

Commissioner Paul Gibson cast the dissenting vote against hiring Fox for the position, saying he doubted Fox’s leadership skills with employees.

Commissioner Linda Shaw led a committee to search for the new manager, but after looking at the six finalists, the commissioners went with someone they knew.

“And after reviewing all of them and after narrowing it down,” Shaw said, “we concluded that we didn’t have any who were better than what we have here.”

In December, McNeill retired with little notice shortly after Melvin “Skip” Alston was elected chairman of the Board of Commissioners and Steve Arnold was elected vice chairman.

Alston later said that the votes to remove McNeill were collected among commissioners, although those conversations did not occur in an official, public meeting.

Fox was promoted from her position as the county finance director to interim county manager after McNeill retired. Fox will make $176,000 as manager with a $7,200 annual stipend for a vehicle.

Earlier Thursday, before the closed-session meeting in which commissioners interviewed Fox for the job, she said she had not applied for the position and did not tell commissioners that she was interested in it.

“I’m always willing to do the will of the board. Always,” Fox said when asked if she would take the job if it were offered to her.

Gibson said he voted no because even though he believes Fox has the technical ability to manage the county’s 2,600 employees and nearly $300 million budget , he doubts her interpersonal skills with employees.

And he said he believes that her appointment was planned far ahead of time.

“I think the decision to make her manager was made months ago,” Gibson said.

A months-long process to select McNeill’s replacement included, for the first time, members of the public to screen applicants.

Many hours of county staff time and nearly $2,000 in tax money were used to compile interviews for candidates in the search process.

Alston, Arnold and Shaw all said Thursday that the first time they thought of choosing Fox as county manager was after they saw video interviews from other applicants a week ago.

Fox’s selection brings her back to the position she held in the early 1990s.

At that time, Arnold helped put Fox in office as county manager; Alston then led a fight to remove her from that post in 1992.

A new alliance was forged recently when Alston, a Democrat, and Arnold, a Republican, took power with promises to cut the budget, hold the county’s property tax rate down and keep the public’s business in the light of day.

Both Arnold and Alston said their previous differences were settled.

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com