The Butler Redevelopment Authority, which has launched a search for a new executive director, has established May 22 as the deadline for receiving resumes.

What’s the hurry?

The authority should be sending out notice far and wide that the position is available. The authority should have set at least a 60-day application window so that anyone from outside Butler County — indeed, from outside Pennsylvania — who wished to apply could do so.

Meanwhile, the authority should establish a committee made up of authority members, a member of the city council and possibly one or two city agencies to evaluate the resumes received and make a nonbinding recommendation.

City residents might wonder whether the small application window was a formality to create the appearance that a real search is in progress — when, in fact, the authority already knows who it wants to hire.

The authority needs the kind of energy and ideas that outgoing executive director Perry O’Malley has provided for about a decade while also serving as executive director of the Butler County Housing and Redevelopment authorities. The city authority needs a person who can build upon the foundation that O’Malley has put in place.

That right person might or might not live in Butler, Butler County or an adjoining county. It’s worth expending the additional time and study to make sure that the right person is hired.

The May 22 deadline doesn’t offer that assurance. It’s unrealistic for the kind of search being conducted.

There still is time for the authority to rescind the deadline, so it can further expand its search.

Butler is at an important juncture. It cannot afford to mark time with ideas that are on the planning table because, in its haste, it didn’t hire the best leader available.

Additionally, the authority needs a person with the courage to challenge status-quo thinking and offer new ideas, when such challenges are in the city’s best interests.

Someone too close to current city leaders might be reluctant to do that.

The redevelopment position must not become mired in the good-old-boy, you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours mind-set.

“I’m just too busy now, and the city authority has enough projects under way, or about to start, that they really do need someone who can work exclusively on city business,” O’Malley said.

But hiring someone who’s now familiar with the city might or might not be the best answer to all that those projects involve. It’s possible that someone who has had experience elsewhere could put the knowledge he or she gained along the way to help Butler expedite completion of some of the things currently envisioned.

The city authority has been fortunate to have someone of O’Malley’s talent working on its behalf, but the time has come to move forward without him.

First and foremost, the authority must conduct its executive director search in the right way.

However, unfortunately, the authority’s current haste could backfire. The city could be dealt setbacks that could have been avoided by merely evaluating more candidates.

Shame on the authority if what it is characterizing as a search is, in reality, just a charade.