CLAYTON — Clayton won’t hire a search firm to find its next town manager.

Doing so would be a waste of money, the Town Council said earlier this month.

“The consensus of the group is that we’re not being good stewards of the taxpayer dollar if we spend an exorbitant amount of money for a headhunter or search firm,” Councilman Jason Thompson said during the council’s meeting on June 6.

The council had received bids from three search firms:

• Robertson Miller Management, $20,000.

• Slavin Management Consultants, $24,000.

• Baker Tilly Public Sector Executive Recruitment, $26,500.

But Clayton has the search talent it needs in-house, Thompson said. “What we have the advantage of now ... is a very strong human resource department, an entire team that’s able to craft these things — job descriptions and advertisements and such,” he said.

The council will rely on that team to write the job posting and send it to the N.C. League of Municipalities, the Triangle J Council of Governments and other places where local government types go in search of job listings.

“I just don’t see spending between $20,000 and $30,000 for somebody to put together a job description and put that out in an advertisement,” Thompson said.

During its work session earlier in the day, the full council had reached that same conclusion, Thompson said. “The rest of this group concurred with that,” he said. “We’re not going to proceed forward with hiring an outside firm. We will use our internal resources and our partner organizations to help us facilitate this process.”

Clayton has been without a town manager since May 3 of last year. Assistant Town Manager Rich Cappola has been interim manager since then.