Great move by Mayor Lyn Hall and city council to appoint Kathleen Soltis as the new city manager.
The new mayor and council parted ways with Beth James in January, ending her disruptive, apple-cart tipping 20-month reign, and turned the wheel over to a veteran hand who knows City Hall and Prince George like no other.
Soltis's ties to Prince George predate the city's creation in 1915. Her grandfather, John McKenzie, was the city engineer and fire chief when Prince George was incorporated. Her father, the late Dr. Jack McKenzie, died in 2013 at the age of 95 and is considered a legend in the local medical community for his four decades of service, in an era where house calls and home births were common.
Combine that with a tenure at City Hall that goes back to 1986, when she was hired as a personnel officer, and in Soltis, you've got someone as knowledgeable about this city and its operations as you're likely to find.
After 29 years at City Hall, 17 of those as chief financial officer, she knows probably better than anyone the strengths and weaknesses of our local government and its bureaucracy. She would have had many mentors over the years and has seen her share of city managers, learning from both the bad and the good. She's probably loaded with plenty of intriguing ideas on how to make city government better and she's got the experience to turn those possibilities into realities.
Her knowledge of staff and union issues will help her calm the waters after the James regime. Her personal relationships, her knowledge of the internal issues and her full command of the books means she'll hit the ground running.
Hopefully mayor and council have given her two broad tasks for her immediate to-do list.
First, she needs to do some fence mending, both among staff and across the community, repairing relationships damaged by James's take-no-prisoners approach. To be fair to James, she was brought in as a "change agent" to revamp city operations, using the core services review as a base. When that review went sideways, taking Green's career in municipal politics with it, James was not long for Prince George or her job. It will take time and patience by Soltis to turn the ship around and get staff all rowing in the same direction again.
Second, she needs to find her replacement. Succession planning is essential within any organization that is ready for the future. Soltis should know who currently on staff has the talent and brains to be her second-in-command. If that person isn't already on staff, she needs to go find that person and get them on board. Soltis is well-placed to groom someone who would give both her and the mayor peace of mind that when she's away, city business carries on.
Shari Green lost almost a year of her term as mayor, first finding James through a national, executive search that cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars to undertake, followed by at least six months just for James to get up to speed on senior leadership in municipal government, something she had never done before.
Hall and council avoided both that time and expense by promoting Soltis. They can get busy with their legislative agenda without having to worry about whether their new city manager needs training wheels and a map.
Soltis has already been busy, even before the "acting" came off her title, which was perhaps the signal that the job was hers to lose. Since the departure by James, the organizational structure has been tweaked, some other longtime senior staff have had their roles boosted and Chris Bone, let go by James, has been brought back as the manager of social planning.
There has been some odd online commentary that Soltis has been hired to be a "yes man" to Hall and council. As the CEO for municipal government, Soltis is responsible for daily operations but, like all CEOs, she takes policy direction from her board of directors, made up of the chair (the mayor) and the board (the councillors). Mayor and council set goals, be they financial, legislative, service or infrastructure, and it's the job of the city manager to engage the city bureaucracy to deliver measurable results towards those goals.
From that standpoint, let's hope that in Soltis, the mayor and council have found the "yes man" they were looking for, someone that will benefit them and city staff, as well as all taxpayers and residents.
