THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 26, 1995 TAG: 9511230227
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
New City Manager Ron Massie has a wonderful opportunity to fill two important city jobs over the next few months with people who see the big picture for Portsmouth.
The public affairs office has been without a leader since Michael Stevens left to join his wife in Savannah several months ago. Planning Director Will Jones left last week with Massie's blessings to take a job elsewhere.
Both of those jobs require extraordinary skills in any city and most particularly in Portsmouth.
The public affairs officer must be competent in image-building as well as in disseminating information. For Portsmouth, it is very crucial to have a person experienced in positive public relations to work on a long-range plan to clean up our often-maligned and tarnished image. That person also must be a manager, a person able to direct a staff that handles in-house and local information. That person also must be able to coordinate, one way or another, all the public information and promotions of people on the city payroll from one department to another. The job will not be easy because nobody wants to give up any autonomy.
The planning director also must be a ``big-picture'' person as well as a manager of people. As Massie said recently, Portsmouth needs a person who can do long-range planning, middle-range strategy pieces and day-to-day business. That's a tall order, but an experienced planning director can do it. Massie said he has a deputy city manager working in the department ``to size up the situation there'' before the city moves to hire a replacement for Jones.
Both jobs need people from elsewhere at this time. Each has the potentital of making or breaking the future of Portsmouth and each needs to have a person without any personal bias to take a fresh approach to the problems.
Massie said he anticipates filling the public affairs job within weeks. Since Michael Stevens had been here only a short while, the city still had the resumes from other applicants who came in when he was hired. Massie said he simply picked those who sounded possible and inquired if they were still interested. As of last Wednesday, Massie said that he had narrowed the field to three people and that he plans to have personal interviews with them all before picking one for the job.
Because of the circumstances, it could take Massie a little longer to find a planning director, but he knows what he wants in the job and he might have somebody already in mind.
Both jobs are critical to Portsmouth's future. Massie's choices will make a big difference. by CNB