Rutgers leadership center hopes to help local governments find reset button

New Jersey’s municipal governments are between the rock and the hard place of reduced revenue and increased service needs, and according to the Rutgers University Center for Executive Leadership in Government, resetting the ideas of how local government works might be the only way to survive the economic downturn.

New Jersey’s municipal governments are between the rock and the hard place of reduced revenue and increased service needs, and according to the Rutgers University Center for Executive Leadership in Government, resetting the ideas of how local government works might be the only way to survive the economic downturn.

Along with the school’s Center for Government Services, CELG is hosting several seminars, beginning next month, to facilitate the discussion of new ways to operate local governments.

CELG director Dorothy Olshfski and assistant director Angie McGuire used their research to formulate four different seminar topics designed to address the pressing needs of municipalities. The four sessions will look at analyzing financial trends, sustainability, organizational design and labor practices.

“When we did our research, it was talking to business managers and mayors about the kinds of things they were facing, and this idea of hitting the reset button to rethink what it is that municipalities should be doing, and what the expectations of citizens would be for them given the extent of the downturn,” McGuire said. “All of the seminars are built around the idea of management and leadership strategies that are new ways to thinking about problems you’ve faced before.”

“We’re not doing a how-to-do-it program,” Olshfski said. “What we’re doing is laying out a series of options or new ways to think about things they already know, and give people an opportunity who are working in the same area … a chance to talk to each other and see how they’re handling their own problems, and see if there area any new ideas there.”

Olshfski said municipal government workers “feel like they are losing,” but hopes the forums will allow accomplished municipal executives to share winning strategies.

“They’re trying to figure out ways to keep as much of the good stuff as they can,” Olshfski said. “By setting a forum, where we talk about strategies that may alleviate some of the stress … we provide the forum for people to think through what they are actually going to do and commiserate with people who have done similar things.”

McGuire said the forums have been built upon work done by cities and towns that have experienced success in the different topic areas. Much of the sustainability program is based of off Sustainable Jersey’s work, and leaders from the towns of Woodbridge and Westwood contributed to planning the seminar.

“We found that the business managers in some municipalities had been able to bridge this idea of managing real operations to get savings with enthusiastic volunteers and citizens who would like to save the environment,” McGuire said. “Bringing those two pieces together really can be very powerful and provide cost savings.”

The first seminar, “Evaluating Financial Trends”, will be held Nov. 2 at CELG headquarters, 303 George St., New Brunswick.