Posted: 11:00 a.m.Sunday, June 7, 2015

City manager: 5-year plan for Middletown on track

By Ed Richter

Staff Writer

MIDDLETOWN — 

Theresomething to be said about making a plan, working the plan and staying on theplan.

Lastyear, when Doug Adkins was in the running to become Middletown’s next city manager, he presenteda five-year, 120-page conceptual plan to City Council with the goal of bringingthe city back to prosperity in a sustainable fashion.

AsAdkins nears the end of his first year, he said the job has pretty much been ashe expected it would be, and that he hasn’t deviated very much from his plan toreach that goal.

“Iknew we were coming off of the recession, and I got the benefit of an improvingeconomy. But I also told council where I intended to go and what I intended todo,” Adkins said. “When I brought things to council that were consistent withthe plan, they gave me the cooperation they told me they would give me.”

Aformer Vandalia city councilman, Adkins, 52, understands the needs of councilmembers from their perspective. He said council has been kept in the loop,adding they are getting continuous information to make decisions starting thenext day after a council meeting.

Inaddition, his knowledge of the city from the past 11 years as a city prosecutorand the community revitalization director has made him aware of the many issuesfacing Middletownand helped to focus in on a number of different initiatives such as workingwith the city’s landlords organization to collaborate in developing a chronicnuisance ordinance.

Sofar, he said there have not been any surprises, and the focus of his first yearwas gathering information and putting the pieces back together.

“That’sbeen the pleasant part of the job,” he said. “You have a plan, and it’s doingwhat you thought it would. You don’t want any surprises.”

Whilehe hasn’t had any surprises, Adkins said there have been several challenges inimplementing some culture and organizational changes.

“It’snot been a cake walk,” he said. “It’s a lot of hard work. The biggest challengehas been pushing the organization and pushing the city forward at a pace thateveryone can stay on board with. You have people who want to fix Middletown on Thursday, and you can’t fix Middletown on Thursday.’

Adkinssaid there were a number of things that need to be worked on ranging fromdeferred maintenance projects to working to raise property values.

“It’sgoing to take big, big swings of the pendulum that need to happen, and you can’tfix those on the fly,” Adkins said.

Hesaid inside city hall, employees have gone several years without a pay raiseand have endured budget and personnel cuts, and there is a frustration in thecommunity and in the organization that everyone wants to get things better,quicker than is realistically possible.

Whileculture change is difficult and needs to be done incrementally, Adkins has alsofaced the challenges of mistrust in government at all levels. He said the keyto changing the culture both inside and outside of the City Buildingis to be consistent in what is said, what is done and doing what you say you’regoing to do.

Thatwas one reason Adkins created “The Middletown Way,” an internal program thatteaches city employees how they should treat the public, why it’s important andwhy the employees should take pride in what they do.

Inaddition, Adkins has been working to make city government more transparent bymaking city finances available to view online, posting the progress of citydepartments in reaching their goals, and working to ensure city government ismore accessible and as inclusive as possible.

Adkinssaid he has been available to organizations throughout the community and citydepartments are also reaching out into the community to interact with residentsand providing the opportunity to get updates or more information on issues.Some of those efforts include meetings on race relations in the community aswell as the heroin summits that have been held several times in recent months.

Breakingdown some barriers when things did not go right, such as last summer’s incidentwith the Unity Picnic with the fireworks in the South End when the city did nothave a good line of communication open.

“Wehad a crisis there and to open that up, look at it, admit our mistakes which issomething we’re often not inclined to do as a government and continue thedialogue beyond the incident past the incident,” Adkins said. “It’s one thingto say we dealt with this and turn your back and move back to what you weredoing. We’ve talked to Pernell Huff and the organizers of the Unity gatheringfour or five times over the last year. We’re probably going to partner withthem in some way with this year’s event and have a police presence and a firepresence there. Hopefully, it will be in a more positive manner than we hadlast year.”

Huff,founder of the Unity Gathering, told the Journal-News that Adkins has beendoing a good job and called him “a stand-up guy.”

“That(last year’s Unity event) didn’t pan out that well then,” Huff said. “But Ithink he’s done a lot of things to improve (relationships). I’ve seen him atvarious community events, and he said he’s going to be there this year.”

Someof those changes Adkins has implemented include a restructuring of the cityadministration that included the public safety department as well as theleadership changes in the police and fire divisions; adding another assistanteconomic development director; providing more funding for economic developmentas well as for quality of life programming, such as a fireworks display on July3 at Smith Park.

Adkinsalso said the city has seen a drop in crime for the first quarter of 2015; theannouncement of the new AK Steel Research and Innovation Center; the opening ofthe Burlington store at the slowly reviving Towne Mall; a new luxury apartmentcomplex being constructed on the East End; some infrastructure improvements;buildings being renovated and several new businesses opening downtown. A longlist of deferred maintenance projects has been prioritized so action can be takenquickly once funding becomes available in the coming years.

“Weneed to put the pieces into play in a positive way,” he said. “Now it’s justputting the pieces together and take them in order of what, how and in areasonable time frame.”

Goinginto year two, Adkins said there will be more focus on how to address a numberof those issues, with some being resolved quickly and others over a longerperiod of time.

MayorLarry Mulligan and Vice Mayor Joe Mulligan declined to share specifics onAdkins’s performance, but Joe Mulligan said he was “very pleased” with hisfirst-year progress.

“Herecognizes the challenges we face, and also sees the great opportunities wehave as a city government to improve our community… Doug has set someaggressive goals, and the department heads and staff members are working hardto achieve those goals. We have seen and will continue to see the effect ofthose efforts in the months and years to come,” he said.