Top Challenges New City Manager Must Face in Worcester
Friday, August 29, 2014
The three candidates – David Moore, Worcester’s City Solicitor; Peter Gracykowski, who served as City Manager of East Providence from 2011 to 2013; and Oscar Rodriguez, who served as Town Manager of Taos, New Mexico from 2012 to March 2014 – are sure to be under much scrutiny in the coming weeks in an effort to determine who is the best candidate for the job.
“I think that the most obvious challenge that the new city manager will have to tackle is to continue bringing business downtown and to the city in general,” said Kate Toomey, a Worcester City Councilor. “I think that it is critical to continue the momentum and to focus on other issues like public safety.”
Members of the City Council will interview the three candidates in an open session on September 11th. There will also be a community day on September 10th, where the candidates will tour the city and have an opportunity to meet and greet citizens and community leaders.
Worcester’s Economy
Among the top challenges for the new city manager, Worcester’s economy tops the list for a wide variety of reasons. Residents and community leaders in Worcester would like to see a city manager that can not only bring jobs and business to Worcester, but also be able to retain local businesses and talent, and create a more welcoming business climate.
Economic development is a huge challenge for Worcester, a city that once was dominated by a plethora of manufacturing jobs. Worcester has many of the pieces - great technical schools and programs, incubation spaces for startups, a variety of colleges and universities, and businesses and organizations focused on improving business climate – but many are looking for a city manager that can help to put all of the pieces together and help to revitalize both downtown and the city as a whole.
Short Fixes and Long-term Solutions
To be a successful city manager in Worcester, the candidate in question needs to be able to both run day-to-day operations within the city, while looking ahead to make moves that will improve the future of the city.
While there is a wealth of issues that the city manager will have to deal with successfully on an every day basis, whoever is selected as the next city manager is going to have to be able to think long-term to be able to properly run Worcester.
“There are many long-term issues that the new city manager needs to focus on including lowering our business tax rate, decreasing the percentage of non-profit real estate in the city, and working on pension and employment benefits,” said Michael Gaffney, a Worcester City Councilor. “There are plenty of short-term issues that the city manager will need to focus on, but these long-term issues are the real issues within the city. We have a lot of small fires in Worcester, but we have real fundamental problems that the new city manager is going to have to fix.”
Related Slideshow: Top Challenges Currently Facing Worcester
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