Otsego County is, by my reckoning, the
second largest* County in New York State without an executive in
charge of the day to day operations of all county departments and
services. Most of the counties that are smaller than us have an
executive, including six of the eight smallest.
We are constantly finding
inefficiencies that are the result of very different departments
working in ignorance regarding how the department down the hall does
the same, or similar, thing. The Government Efficiency Committee is
doing its best, but it meets only once or twice a month.
I know that the City of Oneonta has had
two bad experiences with a Manager, but that has mostly been the
results of factors unrelated to the Manager himself. We're actually
lucky here – we've seen what the potholes and landmines are, and
can plan for them.
We need someone to run what is
equivalent to a medium-size corporation that is very diversified.
More on this as time goes by.
* - Columbia county has, at last count,
835 more people than we do and is Manager-less as well.
UPDATE: I had a faint memory of some change in a nearby county in this regard, so I looked it up. Sure enough, in February of this year, Schoharie County (almost exactly half the size of Otsego) went to the County Administrator model. So it is now true that seven of the eight smallest counties in the state have an executive of some sort.
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