D INTERVIEW

D: Are you planning to leave the city manager job next year?

SCHRADER: My best response to that, and it’s a genuine one, is that my future with Dallas is limited. But a departure isn’t on any kind of a schedule at this point. I subscribe to the view that is held by some in the private sector, that we have a limited amount to give and when that contribution is made one ought to excuse himself and go to something else. In a city like this it is in the range of seven to 10 years. I’ve been the manager now for eight, and it seems to me there are areas of work needing attention that others can do better.

D:. Then it’s not a matter of whether you’re going to stay or go, it’s just a matter of when.

SCHRADER: Yes.

D: Do you see yourself going into the private sector -into private enterprise in Dallas – or would you leave the city to do that?

SCHRADER: I see myself as best equipped to work in a holding company. I see myself as uncomfortable in any kind but an operating kind of position and I see myself so affectionately associated with this city so as to prefer to stay here.

D: The single member district form of representation on the city council has created a tremendous amount of turmoil at city hall. Can the city survive it?

SCHRADER: The institution can survive and it can function, but it will function with limited respect from the public it serves with much less effectiveness and at a substantially greater cost in terms of dollars and in terms of smoothness of operation. And that’s important.

D: So what you’re saying is that we’re going to get less for more money and we’re going to think less of it.

SCHRADER: That’s exactly right. I wish I’d said it. We’re going to get less for more money and we’re going to think less of it. Because it (single member districts) transforms service on the council to something entirely different from what it was designed to be. See, this is a council: it’s not a legislative body. It’s only partially a legislative body, a council designed to deliver services to this city. And a prerequisite is that its members not only have a sense of the public need and desire, but a proprietary sense of responsibility for the institution. The institution has to maintain itself so it can deliver this service. The members of the council have been transformed into competitors for the resources in behalf of their constituencies.

It (the city) can survive and it will survive. The city suffers worse than a corporate institution in the private sector because it can’t go out of business -it just continues to fail. I sit and listen to council deliberations and the decision is clear but a certain amount of suffering has to take place before we can press on to the next item.

What I discovered in my work this past year in cities internationally was that in times past they’ve encountered the same kind of problem and have worked themselves through the same kind of evolutionary process. Their performance becomes so sluggish that those things like picking up garbage and things that can’t wait for a decision to be made are handled by offline institutions that are created because the city isn’t capable of acting. In one city, there was a public corporation established to pick up garbage and it was done by an appointed board of directors of which the city manager was a member and the chief executive officer of that corporation. They told me their council can’t act fast enough to get the job done.

I’m convinced that that’s the course we’re on and we’ve progressed down that course a noticeable amount of distance. We live in a democracy and there is a warning to all the readers and to my profession that we need to make democracy work; democracy has to perform better.

What the public, in its own judgment, has said is that they want single member districts for this city: 1 think that nothing in what I’ve had to say is to say the public doesn’t have a right to be wrong. If the public opts to go down a course that affects society adversely, that is their right. And it’s my job to help them accomplish what they want done. But as we do that, it’s also my job to help them avoid catastrophe. I see myself as performing a function that says to those that read this that “This is the course you’re on. I don’t think you’re going to like it. Think about it.” But if that’s the course you’re on, council-manager government can work with single member districts. It can work with a full-time mayor, but you’re not going to like it so well and it’s going to cost you more, it’s going to perform more poorly, you’re not going to like it so well, but you’re entitled to all that if that’s what you want. I’m here to see that you get that.

D: What forces do you see driving the city in the direction that it’s going? Are there other forces besides the district representation of its own?

SCHRADER: I really think there are crosscurrents of forces. There’s the genuine need of racial and ethnic minorities to have an impact upon the local government that serves them. So that’s one, racial and ethnic minorities. This is also a community of widespread social disorganization. There’s a lack of cohesiveness. That lack of cohesiveness is a function of differences – some are racial and ethnic differences and some are differences of experience. As the city has grown, we have come from experiences in Des Moines, and Pittsburgh, and Boston, and we bring to this a stereotypical image about what city government is, how it operates and how much you can trust it. It seems to me that those factors have a significant bearing on the situation. People of varying lengths of residency in this city are seeking positions of visible leadership. So I think that those are forces. And then the economic adversity and uncertainty is one that underlies all of this.

D: What about forces like business or the press?

SCHRADER: The adversary role of the press is probably the single biggest factor in the change in our life. I say that as one who really has no reason to believe that the press has mistreated me. All the reports haven’t been good, but all the performance hasn’t been good. But there have been instances of great injustice and unfairness, too. It’s a recent media style and I’m convinced if the style of the media persists for any length of time that it will sow discredit. There’s no public or private institution that can survive that kind of relentless focus on the deficiencies of performance. So, I think that’s a major force. But I do feel that the access of the media to the operation of public institutions is essential. The movement in that direction is in the best interest of the public and the institutions themselves. I think open records and open meetings are absolutely essential. That’s been constructive and in the public’s interest.

D: Is your successor as city manager presently working for you?

SCHRADER: There’s no way for me to know. It wouldn’t be at all appropriate for me to make that kind of provision.

D: So he might be?

SCHRADER: He could be. You know, Councilman John Leedom at the outset of his association with the council said that it’s the chief operating officer’s responsibility to make provision for his successor. In a governmental institution it’s particularly important that the council make that decision. I think my responsibility is to be sure that there are choices available. I think that there is a possible choice in the organization and there are a number of choices outside the organization, but that choice is the city council’s because this is not city manager government, it is council-manager government. D: How much notice should you give in order to have an orderly transition? In other words, you said that you thought in terms of winter, spring, summer, and the winter is probably out and so you need …

SCHRADER: 60 to 90 days.

D: How much time do you have to have for a search, an interview, and so on?

SCHRADER: I think 30 to 45 days.

D: So you’re saying that the whole process can be started and completed in a period of about 4 months?

SCHRADER: Yes. I’d say if I decided to make plans to leave, that every month that I hold off, you’re looking four months down the way.

D: What’s the future of leadership in Dallas?

SCHRADER: What I see in the community is competition for leadership and therefore, a diffusion of leadership effort. It’s almost like some of the Biblical kinds of things. We had kind of a patriarchial kind of leadership and we had a mayorial leadership coming out of it. In the late Sixties, national public policy encouraged leadership from portions of the community which had never offered leadership. They told people such as minorities and women that they ought to take leadership responsibility and roles. That national effort achieved its objective by rousing activity and rousing people to action and to see themselves as able to give leadership. This city takes people with real skill to make it function, to be able to work so that when somebody has a heart attack they get medical treatment and their life is spared. The national effort to arouse action really didn’t prepare those people to bear those kinds of responsibilities of leadership. So we’re in that legacy of everybody being encouraged to be a leader and not very many having learned to be good followers.

D: Are there new leaders out there who are capable of guiding the city to the heights it reached in the past?

SCHRADER: One of the things that should be made clear is that the unpleasantness of serving in public office, the frustration of serving in public office is a big deterrent to people serving. If you would ask this council, there would be a high level of frustration, a high level of unpleasantness and it’s only in the last five years I would say that both the sense of accomplishment and the level of unpleasantness have escalated enormously. And it’s only because there has been an offsetting sense of accomplishment that has made it tolerable at all for those who have served on the council. If a Bob Thornton would come forward and offer himself for mayor, he would have a far more difficult time being elected, or received, than in the past. I think that there are candidates out there. I think there are people who can be that way, but nobody wants a patriarch. The community doesn’t want a patriarch and the community wouldn’t accept him if he was to offer himself.

D: As you consider leaving city government, what kind of condition do you see Dallas in as far as being prepared for its long-term needs?

SCHRADER: We’ve satisfied the needs of the city for water to drink and use for the next 35 years. We’ve planned it for 60 years, 70 years. We’ve built environmental protection – waste water treatment – for 20 years and we are completing plans for the next 50, to the year 2050. We have plans forsolid waste disposal for the next 50. We have a private sector utilities which support this community and its economic vitality built well into the future. The one missing ingredient is planning for public transportation. We have planning but wehave a lack of commitment to a plan and investment in a plan that will meet the needs of the future.