Editorial: Ridley the best fit for city manager position despite criticism
Mount Pleasant’s City Commission spent six months paring down 50 candidates before choosing its city manager.
In the end, they went with Nancy Ridley, the person who had been here serving as interim city manager.
Some residents viewed the two other candidates as agents of change. Ridley, on the other hand, was viewed as a safe bet.
Dissenting residents wanted an outsider, a visionary with new ideas. For them, choosing Ridley was the wrong course of action.
Central Michigan Life begs to differ.
Ridley will do well in her position first and foremost because she is already a member of our community. She started working for the city 16 years ago. She was a student at Central Michigan University.
She is familiar with the systems that are in place, but more importantly, she understands why they work.
Even more important, Ridley knows the city’s finances. She served as the city’s CFO before being given the extra duties of assistant city manager and later as the interim manager.
Yes, she was the safe choice. That’s not entirely a bad thing.
Ridley’s expertise in finance means that she understands the value of a dollar and how many dollars it actually takes to run the city – not just today, but how much money it will take to run the city in the future.
Yet we do have our concerns. So do city employees.
According to feedback gathered during the interview process, employees describe Ridley as a micromanager more concerned with the city’s bottom line than moving Mount Pleasant in an innovative, progressive direction.
Some of the feedback said that Ridley might have a hard time delineating coworkers and friends, due in part from her longstanding relationships with various employees and other residents.
With these concerns in mind, we encourage Ridley to look at her feedback, as well as her time in her previous positions, and learn from the criticism.
We also encourage her to be more open and transparent while doing the city's business. We challenge her to do so for the sake of her residents who care deeply about how the city does its business.
Now that the process of finding its manager is over, it is clear that the city’s commissioners have learned a lot about themselves, their roles and their obligations to Mount Pleasant.
Now that the hard work is done, it’s going to be all eyes on Ridley. We hope that she rises to the challenge, and we wish her the best of luck.
