I just read over at Jonathan Ahl’s blog that Randy Oliver is definitely looking for another job, although he and his wife deny it.
Jonathan doesn’t link to it, but here’s the article from The Dallas Morning News which reports that McKinney, Texas, has hired a new city manager. The new manager isn’t Randy Oliver — but it could have been:
Mr. Ragan was one of three finalists in a national search conducted by Arcus Public of Harrisburg, Pa. The others were Charles Oliver, city manager of Peoria, Ill., a city of 113,000; and Robert Person, assistant city manager of Azusa, Calif., which has 47,000 residents.
For those of you who don’t know, Oliver’s first name is Charles, but he goes by his middle name, Randy. Here’s another report from the McKinney Courier-Gazette. Sounds like, despite his protestations to the contrary, Oliver is pounding the pavement looking for a new job.
Kudos to Jonathan Ahl on another great scoop.
In all fairness and honesty, it was WCBU’s Denise Molina that found this gem, not I.
Here is what I wrote at Jonathan’s site:
Personally, I don’t blame Oliver for lying. Telling people you are looking for a job is a sure way to either get fired or lose the respect of your staff. Even worse, though, is lying and getting caught. I’d guess he’ll be gone in a few months. If you interview for one job, you are likely interviewing for others.
As a matter of policy, I think McKinney made a mistake by releasing the names of the finalists. Didn’t Peoria get in trouble for doing the same thing years ago?
First they sold their house here. Now he’s trying to find a new job.
I’m guessing he’s gone by summer. Now, for sure, he’s gone regardless.
I guess his glossy “Peoria fliers” weren’t fancy enough.
Can you blame him?
Why would they publish the finalist if they knew the person already had a job?
McKinney may have laws requiring them to release all finalists’ names. If not releasing names helps insulate themselves from accusations that the search was not thorough. If they said others were considered without providing names people would be less inclined to trust them.
such a disclosure is common
Randy Oliver is the best City Manager Peoria has ever had, and I hve seen them all. He may make the king-makers mad by telling them straight out the true story about he effect of what they are trying to do, but that is what he should do. I accept the Oliver family explanation that a job recruitment agency has his resume, but how can you blame him inlight of the way managers around here have been treated. If he is seeking a job elsewhere, he should be honest about that with the Mayor and council, but they should hang onto him-we’ll see what kind of a confidence vote he gets and from whom. I hope they don’t let this guy get away.
Why is this such big news? I think we should leave the family alone and let them make the decisions they need to make in the best interests of their family without being dissected in the media. Isn’t that what we would want? All this speculation would have the tendency to drive them away even if they weren’t planning it initially. Let the chips fall where they may… Peoria will not implode if he leaves…
This is big news because this isn’t just any family guy working for the city, he is the guy running the city and if he is wanting to duck out, then we citizens need to know why. To me, this is like the Captain of the Titanic shaking your hand and telling you he is glad to have you aboard and then sneaking off to a life boat.
City Managers are like basketball coaches… they follow the money. As soon as they have a winning streak they start looking for better paying positions. You want to keep him? Offer up more money.
Then what exactly is the Mayor and council for? And I wouldn’t exactly call Peoria a sinking ship. What’s up with that?
Diane,
Peoria may be a sinking ship and I think the Titanic is a good analogy. The affluent are dancing merrily without knowing (caring?) about the underlying problems the ship is facing. The ride seems fine from their vantage point- all is well. If they were to mix with the poor or question why we haven’t had any population growth in fifty years-they would certainly sense danger ahead.
I would argue Peoria has been sinking in a more gradual way compared to the Titanic, but we are sinking.
Look at the facts:
• Peoria is no longer the second largest city- we are the seventh. Obviously the growth cells have not produced the population growth or revenue streams projected. The Civic Center and Ball Park (while nice and impressive) also-have not produced the spin off downtown renaissance they promised. I would argue the Museum project is similarly flawed.
• Our largest school district, District 150, is now primarily serving minority and impoverished students. Superintendent Hinton has no prior superintendent experience and the current school board is insistent on maintaining the status quo.
• Racial tension in Peoria seems to be at an all time high and there doesn’t seem to be a solution in sight- unless you really believe prayer is a solution, and if so, that notion may be part of the problem. Haven’t Peorians been praying daily for generations and with what success?
• Our tax base is not sufficient to pay for necessary city services, much less provide money for enhancing public space, professional development or providing other amenities needed to attract scalable enterprises. The newly built residential housing units (north of Pioneer Parkway) and those planned for the future will never ever support themselves. When you do the math you will discover we are annexing ourselves into destitution. If you disagree then please explain why have there been increased city budget cuts and why are we likely looking at higher city taxes in the years to come?
• Developers claim they are simply responding to the market as they build ugly development after ugly development. Meanwhile, the most desirable cities, regardless of size, do just the reverse. The best cities drive the market by laying out their vision and getting it built. They do not take what ever is brought before them (schlock strip malls and cookie-cutter subdivisions) – they do not act desperate. Peoria has behaved desperate beginning with Dick Carver’s administration and it has become worse through the terms of Maloof, Grieves, and Ransburg. The precedent has been set and with the current set of developers it appears impossible for Ardis to reverse this trend. Our current City Council members are weak and lack vision- and so it goes.
• Young talented people are not flocking to Peoria because it is not the type of place they want to live. Some think we need more late night bars, but 24/7 does not mean having a plethora of sleazy bars and taverns. We do not have the appropriate housing destiny, enough downtown retail, adequate transportation options, and variety of downtown restaurants to make Peoria an exciting place to live. Good grief- we do not have a grocery store, dry cleaner, or drug store within walking distance of the city center. If you want to go to breakfast in the city where do you go? If you want well planned green space in the city center where do you go? Peoria generally has done a bad job of creating and maintaining a great place.
• Additionally ask yourself: How is life for our pre-teens and senior citizens who are unable to drive? Social scientists judge a city’s quality of life by how easily the young and old move around independently. When your pre-teens want to do something or go somewhere independently- where do they go and how do they get there? Are they walking out their doors and taking off on their own? No, most likely you are driving them someplace. Our children and our elderly citizens are forced to be dependent on someone with a car. In most cases they can not comfortably or safely walk or use alternate transportation to have fun or take care of their daily needs.
I think we are at risk of becoming the next East St. Louis or Detroit if the citizens do not start paying attention and demand that the City Manager and elected officials start doing their best to create a safe and great place to live. Keep a tally of their votes on issues- they repeatedly say they are for neighborhood revitalization but their votes prove otherwise.
If Randy Oliver leaves Peoria it is no great loss. He is not a visionary- but neither are members of the city council. Ok I give- pray for us!
“Peoria is no longer the second largest city- we are the seventh.”
This factoid is wildly decontextualized; most of the “cities” that have passed us are in the Chicago metropolitan area. This has a lot less to do with Peoria “failing” to grow than with Chicago’s jobs and housing moving out to the suburbs and exurbs, partly as a result of city taxes, partly as a result of sprawl and commute times, partly as a result of property values, partly as a result of schools.
“We do not have the appropriate housing destiny, enough downtown retail, adequate transportation options, and variety of downtown restaurants to make Peoria an exciting place to live.”
Yeah, we actually came to Peoria BECAUSE it’s not somewhere like the DC metro area, where we were before this. If “exciting place to live” means “God-awful smog-choked asthma-inducing urban metroplex with hour-long commutes before you can afford to live anywhere,” I’ll pass, thanks.
“Additionally ask yourself: How is life for our pre-teens and senior citizens who are unable to drive?”
This is not particularly different from most other places in America, excluding, I suppose, New York and San Francisco and other cities with excellent public transit. Lack of walkability and poor public transit is a systemic problem in the US, not one unique to Peoria. (Also, there are typically a LOT of places pre-teens can walk that their parents don’t let them, because of Stranger Danger and Chester the Molester fears that are typically out of proportion to the actual threat. That doesn’t change by not living in Peoria.)
I’ve been reading in the Trib about the shortage of superintendants in Illinois, though; if Vallas is still on the table, we need to grab that man by the throat and refuse to let him leave until he promises to come fix us.
What actually bothers me about Peoria, and again, this isn’t really any different than other cities this size that I’ve lived in, is the lack of professionalism in how the city’s run — not at the level of the people who are actually HIRED with our tax dollars, but at the elected level and, to an extent, their direct reports. In a city the size of Chicago, the sheer size of the bureaucracy tends to insulate the city from the chicanery of the elected officials with no particular expertise. But in the city the size of Peoria or South Bend or Durham (all places I’ve lived), when city council meetings devolve into shoe-throwing fights (Durham, best public access TV ever), the city really suffers. I’d actually take the Titanic metaphor in a slightly different direction; Chicago is so huge that if you want to turn the ship, it takes forever (and a lot of public buy-in). Peoria’s much, much smaller, and you can turn that boat around in seconds … which it seems like we do, constantly, so there’s not a lot of consistency or a lot follow-through on decisions. We HAVE a new urbanist code, that never gets applied. We WANT essential services, but we spend the money on other whims. Et cetera.
George, sounds like you could be a great candidate for a new city managers position 😉
Yes, the same old same old. Talk talk talk — like the scene from ‘The Music Man’ with the ladies — like a bunch of chickens running around the barnyard. George is correct — ignore what city council members are saying about New Urbanism and broken campaign promises and look at their votes — no alignment the path decided that was important but another project to not be implimented.
Eyebrows,
My concern is that when the average citizen (taxpayer) sees new construction they get the impression all is well in Peoria. They do not realize Peoria is only growing the geographic footprint. We are not growing the population base or the economic engine necessary to become more prosperous. We know the new property taxes are not enough to cover the additional costs of maintaining the new infrastructure and there is not enough money to hire additional city staff. If you listen to City Council meetings you know city staff positions continue to be cut and we do not have enough people to properly care for a larger area- think police, fire, road crews etc.
Additionally, when people see new buildings they believe we are attracting new people. If you listen to City Council Member, Patrick Nichting, or have a conversation with EDC Chairman, Bruce Alkire, they would like you to believe Peoria is a boom town. Peoria is not attracting new scalable businesses and unless our elected officials learn what leads to real organic city growth Peoria will not thrive. This is the point I am trying to make.
Take some time and pour through the demographic data and you will see other issues as well. We have a disproportionate number of “high school only” educated adults. This puts additional pressure on the system because they earn relatively less money and in many cases put additional stress on the social service agencies. We are growing the number of dependent people rather than the reverse.
I think Peoria has the potential to be a great small city, but I agree with you, we need stonger leadership.
George makes a number of great points, but a new city manager is not going to change things. As long as the current leadership remains, things will not change. Any new city manager who “rocks the boat” will be out of a job (how many city managers has Peoria been through already?).
What does everyone think is the top priority? We can’t cure every problem at once – we need to prioritize. My # 1 is our public school system. If we had public schools where parents wanted to send their kids, then we would see (among other things):
1. More families buying homes in the City; specifically, in Dist. 150’s area. So housing and neighborhoods would benefit.
2. Peoria homeowners wouldn’t mind so much paying property taxes, even if they didn’t have children in school, as they wouldn’t feel their money was being wasted.
3. Peoria housing prices would benefit, as people would be more willing to buy without fear the value would decline.
4. Peoria neighborhood retail businesses would benefit, with more purchasers and spending power in the City.
4. Crime would decrease at least somewhat with more stability in neighborhoods brought about by increased home ownership.
5. More people would believe in Peoria again and become involved in local organizations and causes.
Drive up Main St. When you get to the top past the church look to the right. Empty lots, then businesses right on the sidewalk. Some of them are seudo shelter/churches. Turn right on Sheridan and every other house for blocks is falling down and looks awful. Who wants to live in that neighborhood? Drive down Western Ave and turn left or right on any given street below the hill and see the houses and unkept yards. Many of these homes are many years old and have not been kept up. Some are rentals to those that don’t care about keeping it up. Who wants to move into neighborhoods that look like this? No decent shops nearby for shopping. NO decent restaurants nearby for eating out with the family. So they move to the outskirts of the city to get decent housing. Until Peoria cures itself of this interior crumbling disease we are not going to grow in population in the city. But our city leaders are too busy building other things like museums, etc., that are not curing the problem. Having a museum downtown is not going to make living there one bit better. Its the housing, shopping, restaurants and other amenities that will do that.
I guess my analogy floated over Diane’s head. I think Mr. Oliver is an excellent manager but he has to deal with the council and some of the egos there. He may indeed be tired of the crap and looking to go elsewhere. Heck, the climate here alone would chase anyone off. My point was that if Oliver is looking for a new job, can we blame him? And this is big news as it shows that once again, the egos of this council are driving away someone who did a decent job. Yes, there will be others but in Peoria, there is no consistency. I guess only a realtor can or needs to be upbeat as there are plenty of properties for sale.
George is right, we need to stop growing, stop the strip malls, and build what we already have. Invest in what we have and grow our inter neighborhoods. Downtown needs retail and I just can’t believe that the leaders that be can’t find a developer who can think outside the box and bring in some retail in those empty buildings downtown. Unless of course we really are in the crapper. I will say this, no museum will do it. We can be the best small town in Illinois but those in power won’t allow it. They want big, big and big. To coin a phrase (sort of); I have seen Chicago and we aren’t Chicago!
perhaps we need a “smart growth initiative” similar to what Portland did, or this Texas community:
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/smartgrowth/
Portland is a great example. While not new urbanist per se, they have sought to curb growth. This initiative has resulted in higher property values inside the city, massive infill redevelopment with a controlled periphery. What is also important is that the state of Oregon has supported Portland’s efforts.
Smart growth would be good for Peoria but would be meaningless without state buy in. You just cannot let developers run off to the next city down the road, or some empty corn field, if they can’t get their way in Peoria. Only the state can curb that.
No, we aren’t Chicago and who wants to be? If you love Chicago move there, but if you love the less overrun area stay in Peoria and help infuse a healthy economic climate right here. All the strip malls in the world and all the suburbs aren’t going to help if these people don’t have jobs.
Well that was my point SD. Why are “we” trying to make Peoria a Chicago? That is what our city leaders seem to be doing. They want it all when I say why not be a nice small town community. We don’t need to grow out, we need to grow up.