Roberto Garcia turns on the tap and clean, fresh water comes out. Emiline Nguyen dials 911 for a medical emergency and paramedics and firefighters arrive promptly to treat and transport her. The Elm neighborhood is happy with their new street paving project. The city just received a clean audit for the twentieth year in a row.

These things don’t “just” happen. They are basics in local government that our residents and businesses expect. It is only when the water from the tap is brown, or the response time for an emergency is poor, or the streets become unsafe that community members wonder, “what is the city/county doing?”

Local governments today are challenged in so many new and different ways, ranging from climate change to community engagement listening sessions, political polarization and social unrest, homelessness and affordable housing, attacks on local democracy and deep distrust of law enforcement. Of course, a new chief administrative officer (CAO)ust help his or her council to address these societal issues. Yet as a new city/county manager takes the helm, it’s essential to pay strict attention to the 90% of the city’s fundamental work that is largely invisible.

Some of the signs of ignoring the fundamentals in local government include the following:

• Going many years without a water rate increase, requiring deferrals of needed infrastructure repairs and replacement.
• An embezzlement by a highly regarded city employee who was allowed to perpetrate his crime due to lack of internal controls that slipped when staffing was eliminated.
• Lack of a long-term capital improvement program or funding plan that would allow the county to maintain and replace its infrastructure, resulting in waste water main breaks and flooding.
• Poor human resources hiring practices and oversight at community centers that allow sex offenders to interact with children.
• A development project that gets approved without significant aspects being fully analyzed, resulting in unanticipated environmental degradation and social conflict.
• A pattern of excessive force claims and lawsuits against the police department.

A CAO and his or her executive team need to be paying serious attention to the basics of service delivery and sound management practices. First, they need to know what those fundamentals are. As people get appointed into top positions from non-traditional roles, they may not have had the grounding in the basics of good government administration and what constitutes established best practices in the traditional array of municipal services: public safety, planning and development, infrastructure maintenance, and community services.

Professional management provides true value to communities worldwide. The CAO and his or her assistants must provide active oversight of basic services to ensure that they are provided effectively, equitably, and efficiently. They must know what to look for in operations and administration and what questions to ask. Otherwise, fundamental services go on auto pilot and can trend to mediocrity or worse and the value addition of professional management is forfeited.

What can a CAO do to help their local government protect the basics of its services and its assets?

Your Path to Success

Understand what those basics are.

For instance, learn the principles of fund accounting and internal controls in the finance arena and how fraud can happen. Understand why public works professionals recommend a pavement management plan with prioritization of streets and a paving cycle. Become knowledgeable about labor relations—what is involved in productive negotiations, positive relationships with bargaining groups, and the difference between them and employees at large. Understand the principles and practices of true community policing, techniques for de-escalation, and community trust building. Know how to efficiently staff, deploy, and triage calls for medical services. Have a solid grasp of planning and environmental law to ensure that the land-use approval process is objective and complete, yet not overly burdensome, and not unduly influenced by developers/applicants or community groups/activists.

Advocate for the basics.

Don’t get lost in the issues of the moment. While those issues are important and may well be on the council’s list of priorities, a solid foundation of city services is what the community expects, even if residents and businesses do not articulate it. Be the advocate for spending time and money on the fundamentals of infrastructure, organization systems, and public safety. Remind policy makers that when things break, they are often highly expensive to fix, plus the community’s goodwill and trust are impaired. It is best to plan and prioritize keeping the community’s basic services and city government operating well.

Pay attention.

While a city/county manager has expert department heads and may also have assistant managers or deputy managers to handle day-to-day operations, it is also important that the manager not delegate everything. Sometimes to check the weather you need to just step outside and see what is actually happening. This has been called management by walking around. A city manager should fully understand what is going on, know where the weak points are within a city’s services, and be the voice for continual improvement. Ask questions, always with an eye toward, “what don’t we know that we should, and how will we be better in the future?”

Avoid distractions.

In discussions with the city council, the city manager must urge continued focus on big picture priorities, effective service delivery, and organizational development over pet projects, shiny objects, and darting squirrels. This requires backbone, communication skills, and patience.

The CAO’s job is a big one. Competing demands from the council, staff, different parts of the community, and others mean he or she must be grounded in the basic purposes of local government. The city/county manager cannot be an expert on everything, but he or she can know the questions to ask to help the organization deliver valued, equitable, and quality services that protect the well-being of the people who live and work in the community. He or she can be the voice for the 90% of the organization’s work that can go unnoticed and unappreciated until something goes wrong. Then finger pointing, rationalizations, and loss of public trust can result. The community depends on professionals paying attention and adapting in a way that preserves the community’s safety, quality of life, and sustainability.

But How?

A newly appointed manager can be forgiven for wondering when learning the tenets of quality service delivery and best practices fits in while serving five or seven engaged councilmembers and a community demanding change and improvement, all while addressing mega issues like housing imbalance and homelessness, mandated emissions reductions, lethal drug deaths, racial and ethnic divisions, and declining trust in government.

The answer is unfortunately that the new manager cannot afford not to provide quality control over basic services. Otherwise, he or she simply becomes a conduit between the political actors/policy makers and the staff. Not knowing what to look for and what to probe leaves the CAO vulnerable to unqualified or low-performing department directors—and to becoming an easy scapegoat when things inevitably go very wrong.

Hence, a new manager must conduct an honest inventory of what he or she knows well and what areas are less familiar and set about filling in the gaps. Such a self-assessment should be done in conjunction with the assistant and/or deputy manager. This means explaining to the city council why the manager and assistant need to attend training and conferences to augment their skills and stay current. Some may balk at admitting to their new bosses what they have not mastered, but such an open discussion actually builds credibility as no manager knows everything that is needed to oversee all city services, programs, and activities.

Resources for Help

ICMA and many state associations offer training resources to help city managers fill in any gaps they may have about any specific service areas of city government. For instance, get a coach through ICMA at CoachConnect. Check out the professional organizations representing the various municipal service specialties for excellent online and in-person training as well. Continuous learning is a way to keep up with approaches proven to be effective in other cities.

Enlist a mentor or coach to help you sort through your professional development needs and prioritize your instructional activities. Retired or encore managers can also help you to discover the right questions to ask and what solid answers should be forthcoming from your department directors and assistants. Spend time with your department heads one on one and as a team to get to know their strengths and their thoughts on the overall organization that you lead.

Be active in ICMA and your state and local managers groups to learn from your peers and to be reminded that you are part of a noble profession. Give yourself time. This breadth of knowledge and expertise is not easily achieved. It will take time in your role and attention to your professional development goals. It is never ending as the best thinking and techniques in local government management are always evolving.

Bottom Line

Get the basics of municipal service right to best serve your community, despite the myriad of demands for action on a host of large and small issues that can easily overwhelm your day. Provide active management and oversight with your team and constantly widen and deepen your knowledge base to ensure your city the biggest return on professional management. Focus on the forest.

ROD GOULD, ICMA-CM is chairman of the board of HdL Companies, a former ICMA Executive Board member, retired city manager, consultant, and supporter of all those who toil in local government service. (rodgould17@gmail.com)

JAN PERKINS, ICMA-CM is vice president of Raftelis, a local government management consultant and facilitator, retired city manager, and a believer in good government and in the city management profession. (jperkins@raftelis.com)