Yarde says he's bloodied but hopeful

Businessman Craig Yarde just sent this along:

To the Citizens of Bristol,

When I woke up this morning I looked at the election results and I went one for two. "Obama Won"- that's the big won. A Change For The Future. Where I struck out was the COO referendum question Number 5. It's a great country where you can express your views openly. It's also a great community we have here in Bristol. Since I started this mess, I want to thank the eight thousand eight hundred citizens who voted " Yes For The COO ".  It's obvious that the majority of citizens  did not want the COO, but I think through this democratic process most now realize the Mayor needs more support to help him and the council with a daunting amount of job responsibilities. Art's a extremely popular Mayor and will be around for a long time. I just hope he and the council does the proper analysis to access the work load and management responsibilities before they hire a couple of part timers. I got bloodied up the last eight months but that's part of the process of change. Thanks

to everyone.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Yarde says yes to COO

Businessman Craig Yarde sent this along:

It looks like a classic fight. The taxpayers who are looking for more efficiency  and cost containment in our city government and the union looking not to change the status quo. The unions biggest argument is the cost of hiring another couple of positions (COO and assistant) working underneath the mayor to perform the duties that aren't currently being managed. I will personally state my reputation ( for what that is worth), that this new COO position will pay for itself in spades. I don't want to list the areas where we can achieve cost savings,  so as not to offend anyone that works for the city. I personally believe they are all acting in the best interest of the city and we have some fine ladies and gentleman trying everyday to contribute. This community will be facing the most terrible conditions in our history in the next five years.  We need someone with the expertise of a Chief Operating Officer to help guide us to the future.

Hiring a few more assistants under the mayor will not provide the management experience necessary to promote efficiency and promote change.

Don't be penny wise and dollar foolish. Sometimes you have to spend a little bit more to get the results that are necessary.  I sincerely hope the citizens of Bristol believe as I do. If I can demonstrate the cost savings, would they support the COO position.

What else are they concerned with if the cost is not a problem. The mayor is still the boss and the COO would never undermine his leadership but we desperately need to manage our business. The COO managing twenty one direct reports is not a easy task but it's better than no management at all.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
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Yarde pushes COO, Couture calls for more help for mayor

The push for a chief operating officer grew a bit stronger Thursday with the unveiling of a new political action committee aimed at swaying voters to back the idea next month.
A website created by Choose COO features information about the proposal and a note from businesssman Craig Yarde claiming the position would save taxpayers millions of dollars.
He said a professional administrator would manage the 21 department heads and “make the city departments more efficient and effective to service us citizens and help to keep taxes down.”
Critics of the proposed charter change say the position itself will sock taxpayers for at least $200,000 annually and question whether whoever holds it will have the necessary authority to make the sorts of changes that Yarde envisions.
Yarde, the former co-owner of Yarde Metals, said that he sees a a communication problem at City Hall that requires a solution.
“At the top” of the organization chart, Yarde said, is a mayor who is set up to fail.
Yarde said that former Mayor Gerard Couture told him “he spent half his day listening to citizen complaints” and not dealing with the big issues that Bristol has to face.
Couture said Thursday that it probably wasn’t half the day, but “it was a good part of the day.”
He said, though, that he also meant the time he spent dealing with issues raised by employees and attending in-house events such as police promotions.
Couture said he’s not sure a chief operating officer is the answer, but he did recommend the city take steps “to professionalize the mayor’s office.”
Yarde said the mayor “spends every evening in board meetings, kissing babies and cutting ribbons.”
He said that instead, the mayor should be hitting up the state for money and offering a vision “to lead us to the future.”
The way it is now, Yarde said, a mayor also has to manage 21 department heads directly.
“You got to be kidding. Superman couldn't do it. Forget about it,” Yarde said.
He said that if voters approve the charter change on Nov. 4, the new chief operating officer it would create would oversee the department heads, freeing up the mayor for larger picture issues.
“The COO would use their experience to assist the mayor and [City] Council and will help in the continuity needed to maintain a long term vision for this community,” Yarde said.’
“After all we've been turning over councilmen and mayors every two years,” he said.
“Believe me, there are millions of dollars of low hanging fruit that a COO can pick without sacrificing service or jobs,” Yarde said.
It’s possible that’s true.
Couture said that his aide, former state Rep. Kosta Diamantis, saved the taxpayers $230,000 in a single afternoon when he discovered a lawyer had overbilled the city.
Couture said he wishes that the council, the mayor and solid citizens such as Yarde could get together and hash out a solution that everyone could support.
The council voted against the chief operating officer concept on a 5-2 vote, with Ward joining the opposition. It reached the ballot only because supporters gathered enough signatures over the summer to overturn the council’s rejection of the plan.
Couture said he tried to make the mayor’s office more professional by hiring a part-time aide, a position that vanished under his two successors.
An assistant for the mayor, said Couture, “would be a big benefit” for the city because “one man can’t run the whole show.”

Link to Choose COO website

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

New website pushes chief operating officer proposal

Take a look at this site to see what supporters of the chief operating officer have to say about the proposed charter change.

There's a letter from businessman Craig Yarde explaining the pro-COO stance. Here's what he wrote:

Dear Fellow Bristol Citizens:

My name is Craig Yarde. I've been a Bristol resident all my life. I graduated from Green Hills, spent half my life at the Forestville/Bristol Boys Club and barely graduated from Bristol Central. I started Yarde Metals out of my Bristol home 32 years ago and grew it to over 600 associates (many of them Bristol residents with a half a billion in sales). I also own Yardezone.com with two partners which converts companies to our philosophy: Establish a great organizational structure, teach everyone to read a financial statement, communicate to everyone your goals and objectives, treat your people the way you want to be treated yourself, open the books, share the profits and most of all - have some fun, while creating a great team with everyone rowing the boat in the same direction.

This is not happening in the City Of Bristol. I recently talked to a union boss friend of mine and he reiterated that municipalities are diff erent than private business. I would say no. It all starts from the top down and from the bottom up. Communication is the life blood of a company or municipality. That's why we have a problem. At the top. I feel we set the mayor up to fail in regard to the org chart. Mayor Couture told me he spent half his day listening to citizen complaints. The mayor spends every evening in board meetings, kissing babies and cutting ribbons. The mayor has, or should, help to solicit funds from the State. He has to be the visionary to lead us to the future. On top of that he has to manage twenty one direct reports. You got to be kidding. Superman couldn't do it. Forget about it. If you approve the new Chief Operating Officer (COO), he/she will manage the twenty-one direct reports which the mayor doesn't have the time to manage. This should make the city departments more efficient and effective to service us citizens and help to keep taxes down. The COO would use their experience to assist the mayor and council and will help in the continuity needed to maintain a long term vision for this community. After all we've been turning over councilmen and mayors every two years. Believe me, there are millions of dollars of low hanging fruit that a COO can pick without sacrificing service or jobs.

If you agree, please vote YES to create a COO on November 4th. It's like money in the bank.

-Craig Yarde

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Yarde says "absolutely unfair" to require notaries

Businessman Craig Yarde just sent along his reaction to the news that the city may require the chief operating officer petitions to be notarized:

This is absolutely unfair. I have circulators who are on vacation and therefore I will not be able to count hundreds of signatures of citizens who signed. Never mind I have to return forms back to over seventy people and find a way to get a them to see a notary. All this in five days because I have to go to Chicago for a corporate Reliance meeting next week. It's not fair for the city to impose this one week before they are due. They have never did this before. This is a great example of why we need a chief operating officer. I can't believe Mayor Ward would authorize this. Well, that's what you get when you have 21 department heads doing whatever they want because they don't have anyone who's managing them. Who made this call. The citizens should call Mayor Ward and tell him to manage his people and let the citizens of Bristol decide if they want a COO rather than trying to put road blocks.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Pro and con on chief operating officer idea

A proposal to create a chief operating officer for City Hall drew tough arguments pro and con Monday.
The president of the Greater Bristol Labor Council, Mike Petosa, said the charter revision suggestion to create the job is being driven by a small group of business people “who are willing to play economic chicken with the taxpayers’ money.”
Petosa called the idea of creating a costly new job “fiscally irresponsible” at a time when Bristol’s political leadership is searching for ways to carve spending from its budget.
But Craig Yarde, a businessman who is pushing for more professional management at City Hall, said the city has a problem with its management structure that a chief operating officer would help solve.
“We have a management team that turns over every two years,” Yarde said, including the mayor, who is de facto CEO.
“On top of that, we have two opposing political teams on the management team working at times against each other. You can see why it's difficult to get a everyone rowing the boat in the same direction,” he said.
“What we are talking about here is giving an assistant to the mayor and council to help with all the moving parts,” Yarde said.
But Petosa said that the city is better off with a strong mayor who answers to the people directly. Mayors “know Bristol” and have a strong commitment to its future, Petosa said.
“Our form of government is a democratic process,” he said, that gives the people the right to pick their own chief operating officer every two years.
“We don’t need another level of government coming in an creating havoc,” Petosa said. “It would be very, very detrimental to our city.”
Yarde said that he believes hiring “a gray-haired seasoned executive with knowledge of municipal affairs to assist the members on the management team” would be well worth the expensive.
“We need to have a management team that can be more effective in meeting short and long term goals,” Yarde said.
Yarde said that city councilors should let the public decide whether to make the change in city government by putting the Charter Revision Commission’s proposal on the ballot this November.
But it appears that the council will vote 4-3 next week to kill the suggestion unless one of its members has a change of heart. It’s possible there will be an effort to revive the suggestion through a referendum process if the council votes as expected.

Here's Yarde's full speech for Monday's 6 p.m. hearing at City Hall on the suggested change in the charter

My first question is how many emails did you receive for and how many against the new COO proposal by the Charter Revision Committee. I received this email from a union member. Here is what the AFSCME is emailing their members:

PEOPLE POWER IN BRISTOL
The Bristol City Council is considering an ill-advised plan to create a new Chief Operating position. The COO would be like a city manager- an unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat running the city. Bristol has done well for all these years. Please contact the members of the city council and tell them we don't need this unnecessary expense. The powers should remain with the mayor and other elected city officials.

I don't know how many of the 1.4 million members received this email but I would dismiss those that came out of the city and all those that came out of state. I went to the AFSCME site and with a click auto mailed all of you a email against the COO position. I listed my real name, with a Southington address. This email is wrong because the union is saying the COO position will be unaccountable. The COO will be working for the mayor.
If the management(mayor/council) team doesn't agree his/her skills he can get fired with no law suit against the city.
But, I lied when I sent the email through the AFSCME web site. I would prefer a town manager but a COO would be a step in the right direction.
Six months ago when I announced to the media my preference for a council/manager form of government, never in my mind did I realize I would be going against the unions. I thought the opposition would come from the councilmen who wanted to be mayor in the future.
Four or five years ago, Yarde Metals a non union company sent a thousand dollars to the men and women on strike for a very long time at a union shop on Pine Street. The UAW official at the time told the media that they had no problem accepting a check from a non union company. They said if employers treated their people like Yarde Metals, we wouldn't need a union.
Taking care of labor equally with management is what made Yarde Metals successful.
The problem with the city is not labor, The problem is the upper management organizational structure. Look at what we have here. We have a management team that turns over every two years including the CEO (mayor). On top of that we have two opposing political teams on the management team working at times against each other. You can see why it's difficult to get a everyone rowing the boat in the same direction. Forget about it!! What we are talking about here is giving an assistant to the mayor and council to help with all the moving parts. I'm advocating hiring a gray haired seasoned executive with knowledge of municipal affairs to assist the members on the management team. This COO knowledge will give our leaders a lot of value. We need to have a management team that can be more effective in meeting short and long term goals. The city needs to create a lean environment similar to Toyota. Everyone must be on board to eliminate all waste and create more efficiency. I think the future will get tougher than better and if we don't improve our organizational structure, there will be more 6 mil increases. I know some of you have conflicts because you get union benefits. You can agree or disagree with this change. All I ask of you is to pass this on so that voters can have a chance to determine our future in a referendum next year. The last four Charter Revision Committee have tried to get this to the public for a vote. Please pass it on. Let the voters decide. After all they are on top of the organizational chart. Thanks

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

No to chief operating officer, says Rimcoski

Veteran Republican city Councilor Mike Rimcoski said Tuesday he won’t support the proposal to create a chief operating officer at City Hall.
Rimcoski said he didn’t like the idea of a city manager and by opting instead for a junior version of the job “they haven’t done anything to change my mind.”
After weighing arguments made by businessman Craig Yarde in favor of a charter change to allow the new full-time position, Rimcoski said he’s simply not convinced.
He said he respects Yarde as a businessman, but can’t forget that Yarde moved his metal distribution company to Southington.
“The guy moved out of town,” said Rimcoski, one of two GOP council members.
Rimcoski said he was particularly unconvinced with Yarde’s defense of Jonathan Rosenthal, the city’s economic development director, whom Yarde has praised often.
Yarde “moved out of Bristol because of a failure” of the Bristol Development Authority, Rimcoski said. He called Rosenthal’s handling of the effort to build a new industrial park “a fiasco.”
The industrial park beside the former Superior Electric on Middle Street was originally envisioned, in part, as a possible location for Yarde Metals to expand.
But when an eminent domain legal case involving the Bugryn family got tied up in court for years, Yarde moved out of town rather than wait.
Rimcoski said that when the case dragged out, “we never had a plan B” to keep Yarde Metals.
“Only later did I realize we never had a plan A either,” Rimcoski said.
But the industrial park that’s under construction now is essentially the same one that former Mayor Frank Nicastro declared essential more than a decade ago. Officials said the city needed prime industrial lots in order to lure new factories to town.
Yarde said recently that a good argument for creating a chief operating officer is to make sure department heads such as Rosenthal are closely supervised.
Yarde said that Rosenthal did well working with him and he’s been impressed with the development director’s efforts over the years.
“If Mr. Yarde is so enthralled with Mr. Rosenthal, I think he should try to hire him,” Rimcoski said.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Yarde weighs in on city management problems

Businessman Craig Yarde weighed in recently with a couple of interesting comments on another post. I want to make sure everyone sees them, so here they are:

First time to the Bristol Blog.
I wish everyone would use their real names rather than anonymous. I tried to post a comment a few days ago using my name Craig Yarde but it never went through. Maybe because I didn't know my URL, whatever that is. So I'll try anonymous and see if it makes it.
My main reason I like a city manager or COO is because I feel the last four Mayors who I know personally did not manage their twenty one direct reports. One Mayor told me he spent half his week hearing citizens complaints. We all know the ceremonial responsibilities and meetings the Mayor has to perform under the city charter. I would say a Mayor has a sixty hour plus week without ever managing his twenty one direct reports. Having running Yarde Metals for over 30 years, managing my direct reports was the hardest thing I had to do. It's a tough job to review everyone twice a year and have meetings with each one every few weeks to see how he/she is performing the goals and objectives
for each department. I had six associates reporting to me. I can't imagine what would happen if I had twenty one associates reporting to me and not meeting with them at all. Let me give you an example what happens when you don't manage your people. Under Mayor Stortz, it well documented in the Bristol Press about his issues with the BDA department head Jonathan Rosenthal.
There was also concerns about Jonathan's performance with the previous two administrations. Personally, I think he did a good job, but i was the customer not the boss. Well, Mayor Stortz bypassed the BDA and formed another committee to handle the mall project. Jonathan had already did the RFQ for the new mall project. Jonathan who makes about $100,000 per year job was in limbo for these two years as they bypassed him. The mayor asked me to be on this committee which I agreed until I found out he was bypassing the BDA. I respectfully told him I didn't agree with what he was doing and refused to be on the new mall committee. They have budgeted three hundred and fifty thousand dollars
for legal fees to set this committee up along with other expenses. Since the pass four mayors have not at all managed their twenty one direct reports their was nothing in Jonathans personnel file. No reviews, no verbal warnings, no written warnings, nothing at all. So there was no valid argument to dismiss him. Knowing the laws, I would guess it will cost the city anywhere from $500,000 to a million dollars to dismiss Jonathan Rosenthal. The main reason is he was managed so poorly. My question to fellow bloggers is what do you think the mayor should do at this
point to handle this individual. A very difficult situation. Can you see the legal difficulty by not managing you direct reports. There was a recent department head that sued the city for $250,000 dollars for the same reason. All I want is to protect the city and prevent our tax dollars from getting wasted for lack of management. We are talking some very serious money here that gets wasted. Your tax dollars.If know of any other areas were money has been squandered. Please email me at hirecoo@gmail.com Thank you.

And there's this one, too:
I did not include Leone in my remarks and by the way he is a strong supporter of the Charter Revision Committee to create a COO position. I know Artie has recently put some warnings in Jonathan's file but the horse is out of the barn. Because Frank, Couture and Bill has never given any reviews, no verbal and no written warnings and have given very little direction to department heads, the stage is already set. I have heard rumors of antisemitic remarks and one mayor grabbing Jonathan's ass but it's only hearsay at this stage. It will all come out in the wash when Bristol decides to do something with his employment. What we have here is lifetime employment in the city unless we decide to pay him to leave and that will be big bucks. I didn't say anything about public impute to the mall or nothing being accomplished. What I'm saying is we are not managing the people side of the city business which will get the city in big law suits in the future unless we let everyone have lifetime employment. Is that what we want?
Craig Yarde

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Yarde urges creation of chief operating officer

Reporter Jackie Majerus wrote this story:
Mum City native Craig Yarde urged city councilors Tuesday to follow the lead of the Charter Revision Committee and create a city manager type position.
Bristol should have a chief operating officer, Yarde said, to ease the burden on the mayor and to make City Hall a more effective and efficient operation.
"It seems like there's already a vote cast against the city manager," said Yarde. "Everyone seems to be so deadlocked against it. I don't know why they're so threatened."
There aren't enough hours in the day for the mayor to handle all the minor issues that crop up during the day and do a good job of managing all the department heads, according to Yarde.
A chief operating officer, said Yarde, would "give the mayor more of an opportunity to be a visionary and get out of the weeds."
A professionally trained manager who knows the law is a "great resource," said Yarde, who will be worth more than the $130,000 salary he or she will earn.
In hiring a top-notch manager, said Yarde, the city will be "paid back in spades."
If the city followed Yarde's recommendation, the new manager would be making a larger salary than the mayor, but Yarde said that is okay;
"I think the mayor should be making what he is," said Yarde. "The city manager should make more."
Yarde addressed city councilors on Tuesday, when they accepted but did not yet act on the Charter Revision Commission's recommendations.
"I'm trying to raise awareness of the value of a COO," said Yarde.
He said there's so little oversight that the department heads end up doing as they see fit. Without regular evaluations, Yarde said, people don't know whether they're doing a good job or not and if not, what they need to do to make necessary changes.
"That isn't managing people, said Yarde. "They're like the Wild, Wild West out there."
Yarde said the city's mayors are not to fault for the situation.
"It's a fault of the city charter," said Yarde, because one person can't do everything.
People are a company's – or a city's – greatest asset, Yarde said, and they deserve to be treated with respect and decency.
If someone isn't doing a good job, said Yarde, the city would have a hard time getting rid of them because no one is keeping track of problems.
Yarde said the city's relationship with its economic development director, Jonathan Rosenthal, is "a perfect example" of how things can go awry.
When Mayor Art Ward's predecessor, Bill Stortz, was mayor, he refused to reappoint Rosenthal or fire him. The tension between Stortz and Rosenthal caused a problem in economic development, and Rosenthal lived in limbo for Stortz' entire term.
A good manager should be evaluating employees, Yarde said, but also motivating them and thanking them.
Rosenthal did a great job of working with his former company, Yarde Metals, as it grew in Bristol. He said Rosenthal tried hard to keep the company in town when it expanded, and said a lot of people in town – including some city officials – don't seem to know his loyalty to his hometown or how long he waited and worked to stay here before moving to Southington.
"Maybe they don't know the whole story," said Yarde, who has since sold the business but still lives in town.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
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City manager tops agenda for charter commission

Instead of muddling through with a mayor at the helm, the city ought to revise its government blueprint to have a manager take care of administrative responsibilities, several residents told the Charter Revision Commission Tuesday.
Businessman Craig Yarde said that handling the duties required of mayors today is “beyond the capacity” of anyone.
With so many meetings to preside over, ceremonial functions to perform, hundreds of employees to lead and a $164 million budget to keep an eye on, supporters of changing to a managerial form of government say that mayors can’t possibly keep up.
Under the existing system, there is “much too much power and responsibility for even the best of men and women” serving in the city’s top job, said Republican mayoral hopeful Ken Johnson.
“We are not a small town anymore,” said resident Gary Wyrebek. “We need someone who knows what they’re doing” in charge, he added.
The seven-member commission also heard requests to amend the charter to allow for public votes on major projects, a larger City Council, longer terms for elected leaders, an appointed Board of Education and perhaps even spring elections.
Tim Furey, chairman of the panel, said it will weed through the many suggestions it’s received and figure which ones it wants to investigate in greater depth. The city manager proposal is virtually certain to make the first cut.
Art Ward, the Democratic mayoral contender, said he doesn’t have a solid position on the idea of adopting a managerial form of government in Bristol.
Saying that it is time to probe the possibility, Ward called for the commission “to sit there and actually address it” in the coming months.
The panel is slated to make its recommendations for charter changes to the council in April. If the council agrees with them, proposals will be placed on the November 2008 ballot for the public to approve or reject.
Both Johnson and Ward said they’d like to see a change to allow big ticket projects to go on the ballot in the future so that taxpayers can decide their fate.
The proposal to switch to a city manager would mean a drastic shakeup in the way Bristol has operated since it adopted the charter in 1911. It has always relied on a strong mayor form of government, though in the Great Depression the city added a Board of Finance that has the ultimate say on spending and bonding.
Johnson said that adding a manager would be an investment, not an expense, because whoever would be hired should easily find ways to make City Hall more efficient.
He said the manager would serve as “a firewall between our politics and the administration of government.”
Yarde said there is simply “not enough time” to mayors to manage effectively while handling all of their other duties.
“At the end of the day, this guy or gal needs to be a visionary,” Yarde said, but there’s little opportunity for a mayor to devote much attention to what the city could become because they’re buried in minutia.
Yarde said the city’s department heads are “crying out for leadership.”
With a manager in place, Yarde said, city councilors would be freed up to make policy decisions.
The way things are now, “nobody feels like they have a voice,” Yarde said.
But a manager “diffuses the power of special interests” and encourages “the free flow of information” to the public, political leaders and city staff, Yarde said.
“Our city is a business,” said Ken Cockayne, a Republican council hopeful, and needs an expert to manage it. Mayors don’t have the qualification in public administration that’s truly required for the job, he said.
The members of the charter panel Furey, Gail Hartmann, Dick Prindle, Al Marko, Maria Pirro, Hal Kilby and Harley Graham.

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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
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