City Manager’s Post Was Not For Munter: THE VOTER

05/26/2023

The Voter brings her commonsense to Alex Munter’s decision to stay at CHEO.

Much as I wish he had decided otherwise, I am unsurprised at Alex Munter’s decision not to seek the city manager’s job. He has once again demonstrated his wisdom.

Whoever takes this post on will have so much to do to turn the ship around that they will be immersed morning, noon and night in a thankless task for which success will be very ill-defined and hard to achieve. There will be no right answers and, in fact, probably no right questions. There will be many who will want the new city manager to fail.

Any semblance of a private life will be subsumed to the work that has to be done to change an entire culture both on city council and within the bureaucracy.

Alex Munter As City Manager Could Have Been Fun

The now-head of CHEO would be like Sisyphus. He’s the fellow who angered the gods by defying death and was condemned to push a huge boulder up a hill. Upon arriving at the top, he would rejoice for a brief moment only to see the boulder roll down the hill again and he would have to start over again. It was a sentence for eternity so, presumably, he’s out there still.

The city would be wise to hire someone for the short term who will go in and do the dirty work to clean the place up. If you’re the clean-up guy or gal, you don’t have to worry about whether people like you or how you’ll face them in the morning. Your job is to get in, do the necessary and then get out.

Then an improved city operation is handed over to someone who comes in to be the city manager of a healthier and stronger organization. That’s a job that might interest Munter down the road.