Werner nearing one month on the job

Larry Werner was appointed city manager Feb. 7. He had been director of the city developmental services department, which includes the building, engineering and planning divisions. Werner, 60, has also been the public works director for Carson City, Douglas and Lyon counties and has worked as an engineer for the state and a private company. He replaced Linda Ritter as city manager, who submitted her resignation Feb. 1.

So what exactly does a city manager do?

The theoretical process is that the board of supervisors sets the direction of what they want to see accomplished and the city manager marshals all the troops together to say, "Go do that."

You spend a lot of time interacting between the board of supervisors, elected officials, the community and the people that do the work to try to reach a common goal. It's also to make sure all the processes are in place for fiscal responsibility and personal rules and regulations, but its also keeping your finger on the pulse on everything and seeing that it's all going smoothly.

You're in a position where you need to make sure that all the needs of the city staff are taken care of, but you also have to follow the board's direction. How do you balance that? It's seems like you're put in a position where you can be unpopular with either side.

Absolutely, and that happens. If a single board member comes in and they want something done and it fits with the overall direction, it's not usually an issue. If it's something they want done that's inconsistent with what the board as a whole wants, then it creates a problem.

At that point, you have to say, "You know what, stop. If we go back to the full board and that's the way they direct and that's the way they want us to go, then we'd be happy to do this. Otherwise, we're not going to do that."

That starts in motion some not so pretty things. At the same time, it can come from the department side, when a department head comes in and says, "I don't have enough people." I have to figure out whether it is a problem or is it a matter of priority or is it a matter of saying, "You know what, just manage." But at that point, you're not going to be very popular on the administrative side of things. It's a balance. It really is.

What are some of the biggest issues for you right now?

Right now, the main one is to balance the budget. We're working with the finance department and other departments to see where we're going, how our expenses are doing and if we're controlling expenses from the administrative department side ... we're constantly challenging the departments to look at what they're doing. Number one, do we need to be doing that? If we are and we do need to do it, are we doing it efficiently?

What are some of your long-term goals?

I really want to get a full set of policies and procedures into place ... now each department pretty much does their own and we haven't had anything cohesive for the employees to be able to say, "OK, what are the expectations? How are we supposed to do things?"

Can you give me an example of that?

Our travel policy. We haven't had a (comprehensive) travel policy in probably 20 years, so there's some confusion on who needs to approve what, how far you can go before you get department approval or management approval. Those kinds of things.

What concerns are you hearing from staff?

Their biggest concern is what is my management style compared to Linda's. There's always the trepidation because even though they know me, they don't know how I manage. For this first month, its a matter of getting to know me and getting to know what I expect. My absolute philosophy is that anything in this organization should be geared to delivering a service to the community.