Lubbock’s City Manager Jarrett Atkinson said the first few weeks of his new job have “actually been a lot of fun.”
Atkinson, who started December 12, has already begun to implement his management style.
“Trying to build a team -type model of a leadership structure,” he said.
Atkinson spent the first weeks of his role meeting with City staff and local organizations.
“I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with our senior staff so far, working with them, throwing out some ideas that I’ve had, things that I know are important to the City Council, and learning them,” he explained. “Council has been very helpful in setting me up to meet different community groups. I’m by no means finished with that, have a lot more of them to do this week, next week, week thereafter, that’ll probably continue forever. That’s a good thing.”
He his top priorities included budget and finance, as well as Citizen’s Tower (the Omni Building).
“It’s a big organization, over 700 million dollars,” he said about the City of Lubbock. “Lots of things to change when you start trying to change anything, but if we don’t start now, we’re not going to make it.”
“One key vacancy I wanted to address immediately, that’s our Chief Financial Officer’s position,” he mentioned. “We’ve got excellent people working on our budgets, working on our accounting, working on our auditing. I need to pull all that together, get it under a single source.”
He said he planned to have an update to bring to City Council regarding the tower by the end of the month.
“We need to pull a large part of our city operations back together in a single place. Today we’re pretty scattered out,” Atkinson explained.
While Atkinson said he will need to be “hands on” with certain issues, he would like to avoid becoming a micro-manager.
“That’s not what I’m here for,” he said.
“There’ll be some changes. Some changes are going to hurt a little bit. When you look at changing things on our finance structure. We’re going to tighten belts in some places. What that means when we tighten belts is that there maybe some projects and some services that it’s going to take us a little longer to get to them,” he explained.
The former Amarillo City Manager said the Lubbock community has been welcoming to him and his family, and he looks forward to meeting more residents as the months progress.
“We drive our service to meet the identity of our community, and what our community wants,” he said.