Bringing Customer Service to Boulder Tall Order for New City Manager

Author: Anonymous

Ron Secrist enjoys a challenge. Two of his major goals as Boulder's new City Manager are to curb the growth of local government and bring it a customer service mentality.

"I'm not presumptuous or arrogant enough to say I completely understand Boulder, but I do believe that my 25 years of public service have taught me a lot about this type of community," Secrist explained at the Sept. 30 Boulder Tomorrow luncheon.

Secrist comes to Boulder from Blacksburg, Virginia, a college town where he spent nearly 10 years as Town Manager, but Blacksburg was just one college town along his path to Boulder. He has lived in Gainesville, Florida, Bloomington, Indiana, Champaign, Illinois, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

"In every one of those communities, the development/business community has told me that it was absolutely the worst place to do business in the U.S.," he said.

"I say that not to belittle what anyone has said about Boulder, but I think it is endemic to this type of community pretentiousness and a perceived or real anti-business attitude. It comes from the large university population and from having things that most communities of this size just would not have," he said.

"Cities like this have very process-oriented governments that are highly participative in terms of public process. They contain a multitude of opinions because people come with vast experience from somewhere else. Academic communities lead to activism, and that causes the processes to slow down, with consensus being very slow to converge," Secrist said.

"One of my main goals is to prove to this community that customer service and local government are not oxymorons," he said.

Creating a customer service mentality within the ranks of city employees will not be an easy task, but it will require a focus on accessibility and approachability, Secrist said.

"I also believe that the most successful local governments are those that do not think government is the answer to all the city's ills or the only place to go to solve or avoid problems," he said. "Local government needs to focus on what it was meant to do: provide basic services."

Secrist also describes himself as a fiscal conservative and says he's fully aware that Boulder's government has been growing dramatically during the last decade. Addressing that issue, he says, rests squarely on his shoulders.

"I do want to remind you, however, that local governments by nature speak with many voices.

Don't be too quick to judge when you hear things being discussed at staff or council levels. There are many, many people involved in every issue, and as a result, you get lots of opinions, and all need to be considered and addressed as necessary. Don't be too quick to jump to the conclusion that your local government is way off base. It's going to take some time, and there's a lot of process involved. After all, this is a democracy," he said.