When I ran for office, I ran on a platform of economic development. When I became mayor I discovered that my predessor had left an administrative mess behind. Simple management things had been ignored or left to languish. We had an employment issue that came to a head 3 days after I became mayor (perhaps a test of me by the staff). My first question was what does the employee manual say? Guess what, did not have one!

So my first major goal suddenly became revamping the whole business aspect of the town. Today we have a web page, computers are networked, all employees have email, phones are answered with the person name, and the list goes on and on. I then went though each department with a critical eye towards management improvements, I found so much! Sadly two and half years later its not all done yet.

But I can say that we have the personnel polices in place, job descriptions, equitable pay scales and most importantly I am insisting on professional management and supervisory accountability. It seems to be working I get less and less internal disasters on my desk, which allows you to focus on improving the town. I think its like building a foundation, so you can then build the first floor and then the second.

Sadly I had discovered that I had to fix the foundation before I could get the more critical needs like economic development moving forward. More then likely a business isn't going to wait for you to get your permitting process fixed, they are going to move on, its all interrelated!