Still haven’t found what we’re looking for

It’s as good as a time as any to discuss what the City Council should be looking for when they search for a new City Manager.

I think the first thing that is necessary is for that person to have a strong personality.  While I know in the past we have had disastrous episodes when the City Manager had a strong personality — I am specifically thinking of Jim Flint who I understand was quite authoritative, but I only know from second hand accounts — I think that it’s important to find someone that can balance out the strong personalities  on the City Council.    The issue when the City Manager serves at the pleasure of the City Council is that if you have someone that doesn’t have quite enough confidence they could be less aggressive out of fear for their job.    However, I don’t think there is any way to correct this dynamic short of requiring a super majority of votes (like four out of five rather than three out of 5)  to remove a City Manager.  So a strong personality is definitely a must.

Someone once mentioned that our current Council has varying experience and knowledge about huge development projects and dealing with something on the size and scope of Alameda Point.   Knowing that the subject of Alameda Point will be looming large in the near and distant future, it’s incumbent that the next City Manager have familiarity with all aspects of this topic.   While this may automatically eliminate the viability of such a candidate in some people’s minds — can you hear the cries of developer’s pockets now? — better to have someone who has been there, done that than doing on the job training.

Leadership skills are key too.  Essentially this person will be the “boss” for all City staff, while I’ve never been a big proponent of a new head coming in and “cleaning house” I can think of a few departments — not heads, just in general — that could use a lesson in working collectively as a City for the benefit of the City and not just for their individual department.   This person will, hopefully, be the one to work on negotiating new contracts with bargaining units and we need someone who will not back down because because of politics.

Some people would say we need to make sure the person is an Alamedan, others would say we need to find someone from outside of Alameda.   Either way, someone is going to be unhappy with the City Manager choice, but — this goes back to yesterday’s post – when evaluating why there is unhappiness with the City Manager it needs to be understood what the complaint is.   Personal slights or lack of access are not sufficient reasons why to change out chiefs and until we get some honesty from our Council about the “differences” between the Council and the exiting City Manager, we will always be left with a huge question mark and this will loom over any future appointment for City Manager.

Oh, and I forgot, Happy Square Root Day!

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