Beginning on August 11, Park Ridge will be without the services of Acting City Manager Juliana Maller for the first time since 1996.  And barring any emergency hiring by the City Council, it also will be without the services of both a city manager and a deputy city manager for the first time in memory.

Maller, who has been in the “acting” position since Jim Hock was fired by a unanimous Council vote two months ago, also served in that capacity when Hock’s predecessor, Tim Schuenke, made his 2007 run for the border – the Wisconsin border, that is – in search of another public paycheck to supplement his Illinois public pension.  She is heading to Hanover Park as its new village manager.

Don’t be surprised to hear howls of concern from certain quarters about how the City is being left with no city manager or deputy.  And don’t be surprised if those howls are accompanied by finger pointing at Mayor Dave Schmidt and at least some members of the Council for presiding over a sandbox that bureaucrats don’t want to play in anymore. 

Frankly, in this economy we’re betting on multiple applications for both positions. And we are confident that quality replacements can be found in the public sector ranks.

But even if it turned out that public sector candidates were scarce, that could very well be a good thing.  With both top bureaucratic spots vacant, the City has an unprecedented opportunity to consider hiring from outside the bureaucratic ranks for both spots!  And by so doing, it would reduce the likelihood of tensions and conflicts between a new city manager from the private sector and a top subordinate mired in his/her public sector culture.

This gambit does not come without some risk, however.

Private sector managers are trained for, and driven by, the quest for profit.  Their public sector counterparts, on the other hand, are often stuck with activities and responsibilities (like infrastructure maintenance and social services) that are chronically, if not inherently, money-losers – which is one reason those activities and responsibilities are not private sector enterprises in the first place.

And while most private corporate boards of directors generally stay out of the way of a good private CEO so long as the company’s balance sheet remains solid, public “CEOs” like city or village managers must deal with more active political constituencies and competing interest groups.  Many management decisions, therefore, tend to require at least some form of approval from elected officials.

Unfortunately, one of Hock’s major failings – in our opinion – was his preoccupation with playing politics.  Consequently, his management “style” tended to be finger-in-the-wind rather than principled, which cost him the confidence of Mayor Dave Schmidt and, subsequently, of the “new” aldermen who took their seats at The Horseshoe in May 2011.    

One thing private sector managers can bring to City government is an appreciation of the need to streamline bureaucratic labor-management practices and rethink compensation policies, concepts that are too often foreign to public sector managers.  Public sector compensation systems, relying on longevity and equity instead of productivity and excellence, breed complacency and mediocrity.

Another benefit of private sector experience is the tendency toward more pro-active management practices, ones that constantly re-evaluate and re-positions the goals the enterprise is seeking to achieve; that identify and assess the resources the enterprise has (or can acquire at reasonable cost) to achieve them; that determine how that achievement can be accurately and routinely measured; and that redirect capital and revenue, whenever possible, from services of marginal desirability and/or value to more productive ones.  

What public sector managers can’t seem to grasp, or simply don’t want to grasp, is that money spent on unproductive and inefficient programs and practices is money that cannot be spent on the productive and efficient ones – at least not without additional revenues through taxes and fees.  Or a winning PowerBall ticket.

After 16 years of relatively lackluster management from the City’s high-priced “CEO”s that effectively has forced the mayor and the Council to extend themselves beyond their policy-making roles into more active managerial roles, more of the same old same old is not what the City and its taxpayers need.   Attempting to recruit a new city manager and deputy manager from the private sector is an idea whose time most definitely has come. 

Whether the Council can muster the courage to consider such a bold step remains to be seen. 

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