The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 56, No. 48, Ed. 1 Monday, December 5, 1977 Page: 19 of 24
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: The Baytown Sun and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Sterling Municipal Library.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
Get Ready For
Those Extra
Holiday Guests
EVAPORATE^
m ,f'
IgF'..'
THE BAYTOWN SUN
AAondty, t Dtctmbar 5, Ijg
Meet William Donaldson, Not A Typical Bureaucrat
CINCINNATI, Ohio (AP)
When William A. Donaldson be-
came city manager two years
ago, he found Cincinnati in de-
cline. And city residents quick-
ly found that their new man is
not the typical bureaucrat. ■
For one thing, he doesn’t like
doors or walls or drawn cur-
tains or anything that might
stem the flow of people into his
office or the offices of other
city bureaucrats accustomed to
working in cocoons.
Also, he never raises his
voice.
This no-doors, no-yelling pol-
icy is the symbol to a brand of
management that has made
Donaldson one of the most
praised city managers in the
country. Both professional city
administrators and elected offi-
worked consider him one of the
best in the business.
“You have to break down the
institutions that isolate people
from accoi ntability for what
they’re doiig,” he explained
between puffs on his pipe.
"What’s happened in city
government is that you have 18
or 20 different governments -
the water department feuds
with the sewer department and
the sewer department feuds
with public works. They be-
come isolated little kingdoms.
We end un changing the prob-
lem to fit it into a department.
So the question is, what can we
do to wreck that system?”
The Donaldson style is an
assault on the substance as
well as the symbols of bureau-
cracy. He saw the principal
making ‘right’ decisions but in
getting other people to make
right decisions,” urbanologist
than its citizens or government
realized.
"Cincinnati was the only city
’What I found out was that ing around town, an insatiable
Frederick O’R. Hayes wrote in I ever went to that didn’t seem
a recent book, "Productivity in
Local Government.”
to be in a lot of trouble when I
got there. What happened was
Donaldson was an apprentice it took about a month after I
embalmer in his teens, but he arrived. The city couldn’t pay
*wiW| vut *sv awivcu, lire vsij ivtiiuss t yaj
found his interest in public ad- its bills. And no one had paid a
ministration outweighed his in-
terest in corpses, After taking
some courses in public finance,
his career eventually led him to
jobs as city manager of four
cities with different kinds of
problems - .Montclair, Calif.,
Scottsdale, Aris., Tacoma,
Wash., and now Cincinnati.
bit of attention. And then we ti
got indications of, by our stand-
ards, gross corruptions in the
police department and we end-
ed up getting the police chief
indicted.”
A series of swift actions by
Donaldson followed to bring the
city's deficit ridden budget un-
Reluctant to take the job in der control. He put a freeze on cil
Cincinnati at first - “I only
came because I heard they had
city jobs and cut the Work force
from about 9,200 workers to
a great zoo” - Donaldson soon 6,500. He, also got the city to
cials in the cities where he’s role of the city manager not as
discovered he would be dealing face the fact that it was shrink-
every city department was still
planning to get bigger. Nobody
likes to talk about getting
smaller. I told the Chamber of
Commerce we were planning
on getting smaller, and they
had a hemorrhage. So finally
we called it 'managing the ma-
ure city,’ and that sounded
better.”
Now, with increased aid tom
the federal government and an
improving local economy, Don-
aldson feels the city can oper-
ate less stringently, at least for
the next two years. But he has
been working hard to get the
ty’s department heads "to
find what the opportunities are
for getting smaller.”
In every city Donaldson has
been in, there are pictures of
him wearing firehats and zoom-
tinkerer forever thinking out
loud how a firetruck, firehose,
garbage truck or police squad
car can be made better.
Best known is the story of
"Godzilla,” the giant, one-
armed garbage truck Donald-
son brought kto Scottsdale,
where he was city manager
from 1965 to 1971. The metal
arm on the side of the truck is
able to lift plastic garbage cans
off the sidewalk, empty them
into the truck and return them
to the sidewalk. All that is
needed to run "Godzilla” is the
driver.
By comparison, even cities
with relatively efficient gar-
bage systems generally use
two-man crews, and in New
York there are three men to a
truck.
eingnrfen's 39fh annual
SSPOTOIO
(AMBUS
mamooccccc
\W
vs//
Lit //. < h V^-'<
Carlton's 5Ctm Braunfels
SMOKED SAUSAGE
"FOR THE BEST—
TRY OUR fourst ”
CARLTON'S WURST ,|-q
Polish or Beef 1
CARLTONS
axAU^ FAMILY PACK OR RINGS
New Braunfels Wurst
TO MAKE
BREAKFAST
BETTER...
SERVE
Blackburn's
PANCAKE SYRUP
1
32 0Z.
BATTLE
BLACKBURN S ^
Strawberry Preserves»« m99*
S,,
, J ; . ;;
.....
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Newspaper.
Brown, Leon. The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 56, No. 48, Ed. 1 Monday, December 5, 1977, newspaper, December 5, 1977; Baytown, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1074304/m1/19/?rotate=90: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Sterling Municipal Library.