Peekskill Makes City Manager's Job Permanent

PEEKSKILL, NY — Mayor Frank Catalina announced Tuesday that city officials have officially named Richard A. Leins, Peekskill's "Acting" City Manager, as the City Manager, dropping the 'acting' prefix.

"This will be the first time in over eight long years that the City Manager will no longer have the word "Acting" before his title. This is well deserved and very long overdue," said the Mayor in his announcement.

Under the City Charter, the City Manager must meet three qualifications:

1. He must have the requisite educational background;

2. He must have three years prior experience as a City or County Manager; and

3. He must be a resident of the City of Peekskill.

The mayor said the City Council voted to renew Leins' contract Monday. He also said they brought his salary into line with other city managers and supervisors in Westchester with comparable budgets, populations and number of employees. It is $175,000 annually.

Here's the rest of Catalina's statement:

While often the residency requirement has been deferred, giving appointed managers a specific time limit, usually 2 or 3 months, within which to move into the City, the prior Administration gave the prior Acting City Manager, Anthony Ruggiero, 2 YEARS to move into the City and that, in my opinion, was tantamount to completely ignoring this requirement. Even worse, before him, that same prior Administration ignored all three requirements in their appointment of a City Manager, apparently believing that so long as they called him "acting", none of the requirements had to be met. Those requirements are there for a reason and the resultant fiscal problems faced by this City, over 18 million dollars in operating deficits in the 6 years before I took office and the complete wipe out of a healthy 11.2 million dollar unrestricted fund balance, were clearly the results of ignoring the Charter and these basic requirements.

Richard Leins, a graduate of Fordham law School, has been a licensed attorney since 1975. He was the Ossining Village attorney for 10 years before becoming Ossining's Village Administrator, a post he held for over 10 years. He meets and far exceeds the Charter requirements to become the Peekskill City Manager and has announced that he has put his home in Ossining on the market, signed a lease for an apartment in Peekskill and will be moving here on or before March 1, 2017. For me, the signing of the lease made it official.

When Richard came to Peekskill in April 2015, he confronted a City in financial distress, employee morale at an almost all time low, and a Common Council that was overly political and dysfunctional. He has calmed the waters, accepted my clear and attainable objectives and the results are clear and indisputable.

The City has thrived under his leadership. When you have an unqualified and insecure Manager, your city and your goals are doomed to failure, your finances go down the drain and your bond ratings tank.

Personally, it has been absolutely wonderful to work with a City Manager who understands the personalities of the Council, allows Department Heads and employees to do their jobs without harassment and respects the role of the Mayor in City government.