Tough work, granted, but as a newer generation becomes more attracted to public service, which is the mission of a new organization, the US Public Service Academy at uspublicserviceacademy.org , the more will be seeking the executive jobs, where the rewards are commensurate with the struggles.
January 11, 2007
Unfilled City Manager Posts Hint at Future Gap
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
TECUMSEH, Okla. — Bent over a yellow 1969 Camaro Super Sport, David Johnson said he much preferred restoring muscle cars to solving his neighbors’ utility and garbage woes as Tecumseh’s city manager.
“It’s too political,” said Mr. Johnson, 36, a former state inspector who quit City Hall in December after voters elected a new mayor and council members he regarded as hostile.
Add Tecumseh, a central Oklahoma community of 6,490, to the list of municipalities around the country searching for a city manager.
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.”
