When I traveled to Urbandale, Iowa to look into Robert Layton’s background and what folks there think of him I was shocked. Everybody seemed to love him — from City Hall to neighborhood groups to retired employees to people kicking back suds at the bar to my waiter at TGI Fridays. Even the off-record chatter and documents backed it up. Such strong reviews are rare for city managers — they usually take a lot of heat whether they deserve it or not. (When I traveled to Sunrise, Fla., I certainly had no shortage of complaints about Pat Salerno, who was then the Wichita’s only candidate.)
Layton will likely be criticized here with the slate of controversial projects the city is involved in. But people back in Iowa are still bragging about him. The Des Moines Register, which we often link to here to keep up with what’s happening in Urbandale, is reporting that the city is basically looking for a clone of Layton to replace him.
“During Monday’s discussion, nearly every committee member said something along the lines of: “Bob was great at” or “That’s something Bob had” or “Bob always …” the story says.It will be interesting to see if he can produce such impressions in Wichita.
One Comment
Robert Layton sounds like he did a good job for the people of Urbandale, Iowa during his long tenure there. But I hope he doesn’t think that what worked in Urbandale, will necessarily work in Wichita.
To begin with, Urbandale and Wichita are two different towns. Urbandale is 1/10th the population of Wichita. Urbandale is a suburb of Des Moines, not a decaying urban city. Urbandale in not multi-cultural like Wichita. The average age of the population of Urbandale is a lot lower than Wichita.
Wichita is, or was, a one industry town, that is airplane manufacturing, stemming back to its World War II industrial history. I know, Wichita’s air history actually started in the 1920’s but WWII accelerated it.
Frankly, Wichita’s citizens are tired of its elected officials falling back on “providing Wichita citizens with entertainment options.” I don’t think Wichita citizens, young or old, want to sit on their bottoms for several hours at a 1/2 billion dollar downtown arena watching 20 old men run up and down an ice rink swinging pucks. Nor listening to a concert in an accoustically unsound arena with no convenient parking.
Reminds me of that old saying, “Fool me once, your fault. Fool me twice, my fault.”
Here in Wichita, we haven’t had a city manager worthy of the name for some ten years. The effort of the city manager should be “infrastructure improvement.” Not exciting but that is what is needed at this point in time.
It’s obvious now that everything promised by the cheerleaders for the downtown arena was flat out lies.
The question for Robert Layton is — can Wichita’s city budget afford improving the infrastructure now that millions have been wasted and obligated to support the County’s white elephant downtown arena?