City commissioners expect to begin narrowing down their list of prospective city manager candidates next week.

Cedartown City Commission Chairman Larry Odom said approximately 25 applications had been received as of Tuesday morning.

The number of applications received was fewer than expected.

“I thought we’d have 100,” Odom said.

Still, Odom said the commission has a good pool of candidates to choose from and expects to proceed with hiring a new commissioner soon.

Tuesday was the deadline set by public advertisements for the position. However, Odom said the city would wait for Wednesday’s mail delivery and add any late arriving applications to the pile.

Applications that do not meet the professional requirements specified in the advertisement will be discarded. The rest will be sent out to all the commissioners in a packet for their personal review.

“The next step will be for us to go through them,” Odom said. “We will call an executive session, probably next week and try to get it down to the top five.”

Once the commission selects its top five prospects, personal interviews will be scheduled and an job offer will be proffered in a few weeks.

The position has been vacant since the July 27 resignation of Charles Akridge, who had held the position for a little more than a year. Akridge resigned in the aftermath of a weekend incident in which he was found to be publicly intoxicated at a Rome nightspot.

Akridge had presided over a difficult economic year for the city. He was credited for helping bring the city’s budget back into the black and for introducing other initiatives that improved city operations and further bolstered the city’s finances.