City Manager's first year on the job marked by renewed civic energy
By Joey Berlin
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Matt Zimmerman was hired as Emporia’s manager, in part, because the city commission wanted him to infuse a new level of energy into city leadership.
As he hits his one-year anniversary on the job today, he feels like city staff has done that and more.
“It was a down organization, and when I first walked in the door, I could see that the city commission was right,” he said. “And I think we’ve done a lot to change that perception; I really believe that.
“Does that mean that everybody’s happy all the time? No, of course not. But the sense of purpose, I think, is there, the sense of working together is there, that we have goals that we’re working towards there. And the whole organization feels much more enlivened.”
But as any college student using gallons of Red Bull as a performance-enhancer will tell you, energy means nothing if it doesn’t lead to results. And Zimmerman believes the city has accomplished a lot in his first year. He looks at city development in three steps: identifying problems, developing plans and implementing them.
“I think we got all the way through Step One, and I think we’re very far along in Step Two, and we’re already starting to implement some plans in terms of Step Three,” he said. “Including things like the Building Futures program, that’s starting to get off the ground now. Others are still in the planning stages, or just completed: the Buxton study, Main Street (Community Initiated Development) ... those things with Building Futures tie in together.”
Zimmerman also believes city leadership has done a good job of identifying the concerns the community has.
“Not just a general malaise,” he said, “but also a sense that things aren’t as good as they could be, or as they used to be. And that’s always a mythic target that no one can ever hit.”
In the minds of Zimmerman and his wife, Valerie, life here is far better than many make it out to be. He said he and his wife go out more than they ever did in the Chicago area because of the opportunity, accessibility and lower expense. When he talks about the impressions from locals he heard upon arriving last year, he mimics the whininess of a perpetual complainer.
“When we first came to the community, it was like, ‘Weeeell, you knooooow, it’s not like the good old daaaays, and there’s not anything to dooooo,’” he said. “And we’re like, ‘Wait a minute — that’s not true. You lived here for a long time, or maybe even all your lives, and you’re not seeing all of the opportunities that you have — opportunities that don’t exist in a lot of places in Kansas, to be honest with you, in terms of all of those issues.’”
Changing that negative perception was a big reason Zimmerman started working on the Image campaign early in his tenure, which grew into the Building Futures campaign. He wanted to make sure part of the campaign focused on internal perception as well as external.
Mayor Julie Johnson made reference to the renewed energy Zimmerman had brought to city government during her State of the City address in January.
“And I don’t mean this at all negative about the previous city manager at all,” Johnson said this week, “but I think that whenever you have someone new come in, because there’s an unknown factor, there’s just a special energy that comes. And then, he is a very upbeat and energetic, hard-working individual, and I think anyone that comes in contact with him senses that, or gets a feel for that.”
Johnson said Zimmerman has provided the city commission with good ideas for gaining public input and has responded well to unexpected issues. The city manager admits that some of those issues, like the announcement of the Tyson layoffs, would-be Police Chief Clark Morrow deciding not to take the job, and the construction of the Renewable Energy Group biodiesel plant being halted, have been frustrating.
“I feel like we have this really good community, and I feel like we’re really poised for some positive things in the coming years. But it does feel a little bit like for every time we take a step forward, we take a half-step back,” he said. “... The Tyson timing — and they did what they had to do, I understand that, and they’re gonna do what they need to do on their time frame, obviously — but it was a real kick in the knees.”
Zimmerman recently received a $5,000-per-year raise from the city commission, increasing his salary to $120,000. With raises for other city employees on hold following the city’s wage and classification study, some have questioned whether the city manager needs to be getting a raise now while others wait.
Zimmerman points out that his wages are set by contract negotiation with the city commission. As a result, his position wasn’t part of the wage study. He said his raise was originally supposed to come in January, but with the Tyson announcement and other factors, he and the commission decided to hold off on it.
“I already forewent, if you will, three months of a potential raise, because this wasn’t retroactive,” he said. “I voluntarily gave up three months of a potential raise, which my contract didn’t require me to do. But my feeling was, the city commission’s feeling was, that was the right thing to do at the time.
“And lastly, let’s say we waited till the wage study is done, implemented ... People are going to come back and say, ‘Well see, it was all about improving him. He got more because everybody got X amount, so he had to get X amount more.’ And that’s not true, but people were going to say that anyway.”
As his tenure progresses, Zimmerman wants to continue identifying options for improving the town’s shopping and retail base. He said Emporia is in a competitive environment, and he knows that other towns in the region have more options in that area.
“We used to be — and this is one area where I think people are probably right about how life used to be better — was, we were clearly, from what I can read in the history books and so on, we were clearly a hub city in Kansas,” he said. “People came to Emporia to do stuff. And we’ve lost that.”
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