They are an endangered species. Oh, won’t someone save them!
So says The New York Times in a story that mentions our very own City Manager-Until-June Pam Syfert.
Seems being the supreme executive authority in a town or city is just not the job it is cracked up to be. The Times:
Fractious politics and disdain for government, the limits of small-town life and pay, and the aging of baby boomers traditionally drawn to civic careers are making the job harder to fill, even as communities increasingly turn to such professional administrators to oversee budgets, services and personnel.
The shrinking pool of recruits is a forerunner of what some experts call a broader government talent shortage to come. With the bulging postwar generation nearing its retirement years, statisticians forecast a growing gap of unfilled executive and managerial jobs.
The effects are only beginning to be felt nationally, according to the International City/County Management Association, which has held regional conferences on what it deems a crisis. The number of American communities that are having trouble finding a city manager is not known, the association says, but at any given time several dozen may be advertising openings, and the listings are expected to rise sharply in coming years.
Frank Benest, a veteran city manager in Palo Alto, Calif., is working to recruit a new generation of managers in the face of what he calls a “demographic tsunami”: far more managers planning to retire than young people to replace them. Whenever city managers get together for conferences, said Mr. Benest, 57, “all you see is gray hair.”
Well then, city managers forgot to raise themselves up some little city managers. Not sure what this means for Syfert’s replacement, other than Charlotte will no doubt end up paying a lot to fill the slot. Still unknown — inside hire or outside hire?
