When the producer Gary Mandell looked over his shoulder at Opening Night last Thursday for the 15th year of the weekly Summer Music Festival, the first personality he mentioned espying in the huge crowd at City Hall was Mark Scott.
This is getting to be a habit.
Mr. Scott’s tall, spare and elegant 60-year-old frame is turning up all around town.
At large and pocket-sized gatherings.
The authors of the City Charter framed their thoughts with a little more gloss and class than this, but essentially, Mr. Scott is the new Big Boss of Culver City.
For an introductory volley, Mr. Scott holds the distinction — listen closely now — of being the briefest-named City Manager in the United States.
There may be chief executives with fewer letters in their names.
But Mr. Scott, 6 weeks on the job in Culver City, reigns as champion because neither a liberal nor a conservative can have less than one syllable in his given name and his surname.
With that settled, we can get into a philosophy of governing a community of 40,000 in depressed times later.
He already has made a sizable crease in the fabric of Culver City with one small gesture for mankind:
Visibility.
Six days before the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing — before 10-year-old Michael Jackson was even old enough to shlep there — Mr. Scott is making an impact in Culver City merely by being visible.
Call him Mr. Outside.
He is on the street. In community meetings. At informal gatherings. He wants to get to know residents and for them to be comfortable with him.
It Used to be Different
The retired Jerry Fulwood, his long-serving predecessor at the City Manager’s desk, was, decidedly, Mr. Inside.
Rarely espied on the streets or at public gatherings.
Chiefly, he was an administrator, not Mr. Gladhanding J. Personality.
Even more chiefly, he was a man of the fewest words that could be acceptable.
His communicating skills were fine, but he never was in danger of facing charges of long-windedness.
If communities require change in the cadence of their leaders the same way that organized groups do, then Mr. Scott’s style of pleasant, easy-going, but not truly extroverted manner of governing, is a pleasant difference in pace.
