Council Privately Votes on City Manager After Second Public Interview

The East Providence City Council met behind closed doors Thursday night to cast its vote for a new city manager. The vote occurred after the second finalist candidate, Kenneth Fields, was interviewed publicly, the  one of its kind since last week.

After leaving executive session, members returned to their seats in the Council Chambers and unanimously voted to seal the minutes. Mayor Bruce Rogers said a unanimous vote occurred in executive session and that the city will publicly announce the name of the selected candidate after an offered contract has been accepted. Rogers said he does not anticipate any serious salary negotiations prolonging making the news public.

Rogers also said he made several attempts to contact the chosen applicant by phone after the executive session had ended Thursday evening, but received no answer. He plans to try again Friday morning, as he would like the city manager to begin "as soon as possible," though he recognizes that a chosen candidate may need "30 days to withdraw from his current job."

Fields, born and raised in New York City, holds an undergraduate degree in Engineering, a graduate degree in Public Management and Policy. Fields' graduate work took him to Pittsburgh, PA, where he served as the budget director and labor relations director of the city. After leaving Pennsylvania, Fields did consulting work for state and local government and later returned to Pittsburgh to accept a position as the budget director for a federally funded research institute at Carnegie Melon University.

Because he "missed government," Fields went to work as a budget director for Hollywood, FL, before taking a job as the city manager for Florida's Seminole Tribe.

The council began its public interview shortly after 6 pm in the council chambers, with Fields answering a standard fare of questions for roughly an hour. He began addressing the city's , in relation to the school department. Fields said that levying taxes in a way that would not divide the school department or burden the taxpayers would require "ongoing communication between the two elected bodies."

On matters of government efficiency, Fields was less generic. He cited his experience with using interns and recent college graduates as inexpensive and knowledgeable manpower in updating electronic financial record keeping. His experience with using interns while in Hollywood, FL, led him to further suggest courting recent graduates from Providence universities and colleges to work, along with imploring those institutions to possibly "set up satellite research" facilities in East Providence.

Fields also spoke to East Providence's recent bond , saying he would appeal directly to the rating agencies in New York "the facts" of the city's financial reality, much like he did when he was working in Pittsburgh, adding that an "aggressive" approach to making improvements would be needed to improve the city's standing in the eyes of a rating agency.

Download the movie