Burlington City Council appointed Bob Patterson as the new city manager, as former City Manager Craig Honeycutt retired. Honeycutt will remain in the role of city manager emeritus until Dec. 31. Patterson began his new role Oct. 30.
The Burlington City Manager is an appointed position that oversees daily city operations and all municipal departments, implements council policies, and keeps the council informed on the city’s finances and affairs, according to the City of Burlington’s website.
“Near-term goals are to maintain our staffing levels, competitive wages, make sure we have good quality employees to provide that continued excellent service to our citizens across all of our departments, and also provide the best value for our citizens’ tax dollars,” Patterson said.
The council held an internal application process to find its new manager. The search started internally before looking for an applicant externally. The City Council ended up choosing Patterson, an internal candidate. Patterson, who previously served as the Waters Resource Director for Burlington, said encouragement from others inspired him to apply for city manager. Patterson said he previously worked in civil engineering in Pennsylvania for a water utility before moving to Burlington to work in the engineering department, where he helped design water and sewer lines.
“I had a lot of encouragement from other employees,” Patterson said. “They respected me and saw me as a leader.”
Honeycutt emphasized the importance of trust when it comes to this role and he said he feels Patterson has that as well as the experience.
“He’s been public works director. He’s been over engineering, he’s been over water resources.” Honeycutt said “Bob knows everybody, and Bob instills confidence with staff.”
Patterson initially wanted to work at a civil engineering consultant firm and never thought that he would go into politics. However, Patterson said Burlington’s community is what encouraged him to stay in local politics.
“I enjoyed the direct service to our citizens that local government provides,” Patterson said.
Patterson also said the recent growth in Burlington is something he would like to continue.
“Since I’ve been here, we’ve had growth, but it’s been more slow, steady, not the rapid growth in the last couple years.” Patterson said. “Then we’re seeing more developers from outside the community, come and build, not just Burlington, but also in Alamance County and in all of our towns.”
The city of Burlington’s population has grown about 14% from 2010 to 2020, according to data from the United States Census Bureau.
Patterson said he is most looking forward to working with the different departments across Burlington.
“I know there’s a lot of great staff in those departments.” Patterson said “I will also get more opportunity to work with our police department, our fire department, our Animal Services Division, several of these departments that I haven’t, I don’t know as well, and just that ability to interact and work with our employees is just because they do such a good job.”
Honeycutt described success in this role as being able to communicate with the community. According to 2020 U.S. Census data, Burlington has population of 57,303 — making it the biggest city in Alamance County by population.
“You have to have experience, especially in a community this large.” Honeycutt said. “You have to have trust, especially from existing staff, that you have somebody, elected officials and state officials and nonprofits, you have to be able to work with the gamut of all types of people within our organization.”
Honeycutt also emphasized the importance of building relationships as city manager.
“This job is about relationships,” Honeycutt said. “It’s about relationships with elected officials. It’s about relationships with, you know, chambers and nonprofits and staff. And again, the job is not that hard, but its hard to coordinate a lot of different opinions and a lot of different needs, but you have to just be open, listen and trust what people are telling you.”
Honeycutt said the biggest advice he had for Patterson was to focus on the bigger things rather than the smaller things.
“There’s a lot of little things that come up that seem important but they usually work out themselves,” Honeycutt said. “Focus on the big, pressing issues for the city, but there’s a lot of little things that come up that’ll work out themselves.”