Roger Bradley’s 100-day plan includes stability, planning for future

Roger Bradley began his new role as Downey city manager last week. Photo by Alex Dominguez

DOWNEY — Just over a week since being sworn in, City Manager Roger Bradley says stability and setting a strategic plan for the city’s future are his top priorities.

So far, Bradley’s tenure as Downey’s city manager has been “getting up to speed.”

“The past week I’ve been spending meeting with all my department heads, trying to get an update of what projects they’re working on, what issues they’re dealing with and addressing, and basically just trying to download everything,” said Bradley. “I had a chance to meet with the council as well, and really just get a good operational snapshot of what’s going on with the organization.”

He enters at a high-stakes time for the city, as the city is in the midst of working on its upcoming fiscal year budget while also needing to fill in the holes left from departed department heads and staff.

“We’re in budget season, so we need to get the budget going,” said Bradley. “I wish we were a little farther along than we are, but [the city] was very respectful of letting me come on board as new manager to help control the budget process, so we are in a little bit of a catch-up mode to get going on that.”

On stability, Bradley said,

“Organizationally, I think there are a few of things I’m going to focus in on with staff,” said Bradley. “We talked about looking at filling in some of our vacancies, and that’s really one of our immediate needs and biggest concerns,” said Bradley. “I want to make sure than we can be more strategic internally. I’m really looking to build culture; I want this to be a great place for everybody to work.

“I’m really focused in on making sure that one, staff has the feeling that they can innovate and do new and exciting things, and they’ve got somebody to back them up – because things sometimes don’t go the way we expect – but they know that it’s okay to try to innovate new things. That’s what I’m going to try and foster here with our staff.”

He says that it’s about “getting back to a sense of normalcy for folks.”

“Yes, things have been a little bit rocky over the last short term, but I think it’s really just trying to build a feeling that the future is bright, and we’re going to go to a good place,” said Bradley. “We have good finances; we’ve been well managed on that front. So, really it’s now trying to figure where are some of our deficiencies in our staffing, build up a little bit to make sure that we’re strong and we continue to focus on the needs of the community.”

“I think economic development, we continue to look at how do we not only attract, but retain the strength in our business community; how do we continue to make people when they come here to Downey feel like it’s a special place and see all the great amenities that we have.”

When asked about Downey’s long track record of balanced budgets and his feelings on taking on the endeavor of continuing that trend, Bradley said “you want to make sure you’re not the weak link in the process.” He said he sells himself as “a financial person,” making note of his background in business statistics.

“There’s been some great management here in the past. We’ve done well financially; I hope I can add to that,” said Bradley. “We want to make sure that obviously we keep balancing the budget; that’s important to me.

“Throughout my career I’ve worked in big organizations managing half-billion-dollar budgets and other things, with 1,600, 1,700 employees, so, I think I can add to that. But right now, we’re going through our first cycle with the budget, and we’ll see kind of how it goes.”

He has a first 100-day plan that he is following, focused primarily on learning, planning, and eventually execution.

“The first quarter of it is mostly looking at building knowledge of the organization and the community,” said Bradley. “I do want to continue to work with the council, and we have a priorities workshop coming up here in the near future, which will really start setting the stage for what we want to do over the long haul.”

Ultimately, Bradley says his job boils down to helping the council “execute their vision.”

“That’s really where I’m headed,” said Bradley “That’s the middle-term effort, I guess, is to try and build a strategic vision for the city and then from there we’ll try to execute and turn that into a long-term plan.”

He adds that he views himself as a “servant leader.”

“My job is to, with staff, make sure they have the resources, the things they need to get the job done,” said Bradley. “I think really the manager’s role is to be aware of what’s going on in the organization and figure out how to make the team successful…my job is to help them succeed.”