With Martin Cole’s departure from City Hall last week, City Manager John Nachbar is looking for two executives – an assistant to the city manager and a city clerk.
When Mr. Nachbar arrived six Augusts ago, he inherited Martin Cole, who was the city clerk and also held the title of assistant city manager, not “assistant to.”
If there are two people more unalike than Messrs. Nachbar and Cole, they may live at the other end of the earth.
One is fastidiously tidy. The other had a desk that occasionally could be seen among the dense piles of paperwork.
There was no announcement when Mr. Cole’s role as assistant city manager was ended.
Mr. Nachbar said his next assistant would carry a different title, assistant to the city manager.
Since hardly anyone around City Hall seemed to know what an assistant city manager did, Mr. Nachbar was asked.
He said that an assistant city manager “is responsible for performing high level tasks associated with the management and operation of the city.”
The names of those “high level tasks” evidently are destined to live out their amorphous lives in a shadowy corner of limbo now that Mr. Cole and City Hal have ended their relationship.
