So, let’s follow our fantasies. What if someone actually measured the performance of our City Administrator and caused said Administrator to vacate the office. Then what? What or who do we need to lead the City? What are the qualifications required for the job? Who should be involved in the hiring process? Please don’t say national search, that’s how we got in this mess. For our own entertainment, I am asking for fun seeking Niagara Hub participants to send in ideas related to running this City efficiently.
City employees: Please chime in on how things should be managed, what you want your boss to do, what you want your boss to stay away from.
City residents: What personality traits should a City Administrator master to communicate effectively to the voters and taxpayers of Niagara Falls?
Businesses: What qualifications should someone controlling the direction of this City embody? How should this person deal with developers, business owners, and investors?
So just for sh**s and giggles, lets create the perfect resume that should be submitted by a candidate for City Administrator. We can compare it to the resume of the current City Administrator (By the way has anyone seen that document? I’d like to call a few references, or confirm the experiences paragraph, but I’ve already spent too much time trying to disqualify an obvious stellar professional.) More importantly, perhaps we could submit it to someone at City Hall for their consideration, should someday, somehow, a replacement be needed to fill the most important job in the City.
Submit your ideas in the comment section below. Be anonymous or wave your own flag, but please participate.
I submit that the city administrator should have no more contact with the public than the city attorney or the city clerk. While very often I do not like the answers that the current city administrator gives, like the attorney and clerk, she should only answer to the mayor (or the council, as appropriate) and have little to no dealings with the public — she is an ADMINISTRATOR, period: the department heads’ boss and chief personnel officer; she is not in line to become ‘the’ mayor, nor should she have any of his duties.
Too often, she, like the council, takes the hit for what the mayor and his administration is supposed to be doing. All too often I see people in front of city council trying to get the council to do the mayor’s job, and when they fail, they take the hit instead of the mayor — and then they reelect the mayor.
We cannot expect the mayor to have all of the answers, but we should expect that the office of the mayor could get back to us with those answers in an intelligible and timely fashion.
Knowing virtually every city administrator/manager since the mid-80s, none had the public scrutiny as did this one — not withstanding that she has either put herself out there or have been put out there more so than the rest. The average citizen should scant know who the administrator is. It is the mayor’s job to communicate with the citizenry. He/she is the point-person.
As for qualifications, the administrator should fully know and understand the various functions of the city’s departments, set standards and specific attainable goals for their performance within budget restraints and routinely meet with them to keep them on task.
I’m thinking all politicians, including the Mayor, should have to submit a resume, too.
How about speak English and concentrate on pronouncing and listening?