The Doctor is in ... at City Hall

City Manager Robert Long
now can add Dr. Long to his CV

Those viewing last week's Prince Rupert City Council session may have noticed a new designation for City Manager Robert Long, as those councillors addressing questions or offering comments to the city's top staff member repeatedly referred to him as Doctor Long on Monday night.

The new acknowledgement offering a tone of congratulations for Mr. Long's recent academic success, with the City Manager who joined the staff at City Hall in 2013, now listed as having received his PhD in Leadership and Change from Ohio based Antioch University.

The Antioch program which not only is a challenging travel into academic life, is also an expensive one, with annual tuition of near 25,000 dollars per year.

In their introduction to their program Antioch University frames their program as follows: 

Antioch’s PhD in Leadership and Change program is dedicated to engaging working professionals in the interdisciplinary study, research and practice of leading positive change in workplaces, schools, organizations, and communities, across the country and world.

As part of  the abstract to Dr. Long's PhD dissertation he notes that "the study attempts to understand how the functionality of the mayor-chief administrator officer CAO relationship impacts on the ongoing operation of these two local government positions."

The 162 page presentation covers a range of areas, from historical context, to structural analysis of the Mayor-CAO relationship and how leadership theory and relationship building brings leaders together.

Those are all rather familiar themes from City Council sessions of recent years, where Mayor Lee Brain and Council members have frequently made note of the team approach that this current city council and that of the four years previous have taken on, that as part of their new culture of governance at City Hall.

All of which would seem to suggest that some of the last six years has helped to provide for some of the research towards Dr. Long's final document and his achievements in his academic pursuit; while also creating the blue print for how Prince Rupert's Civic government now operates.

The conclusion to his presentation following four years of doctoral study also notes of the ever evolving dynamic of the Mayor-CAO relationship:

My four-year doctoral journey of discovery has been long and, at times, difficult. Although I have no absolute answers to my research questions, I do have new perspectives on how the functionality of the mayor-CAO relationship dyad may operate. 

Suggestions of new ways of valuing different processes and phenomena have been made so as to reach the most effective way of understanding the mayor-CAO relationship. Because every relationship has its own context, history and dynamics there will not be any “correct” ways of making the relationship functional, however the research has presented a different way of understanding the mayor-CAO relationship’s dyad. 

I hope that through this learning, the dysfunctionality of these mayor-CAO relationships—which I have experienced personally—can be reduced. 

It may lead to less conflict and pain and a more stable functionality for those mayors and CAOs who are trying to serve their communities for the public good.

The final product of four years of study and research on themes municipal is now available for review, with Dr. Long's dissertation part of the Antioch University archives, you can give it a read here.

Council may want to make a more formal announcement of his hard work and academic success at an upcoming city council session. 

Perhaps even offering a few minutes \to Dr. Long to review the work he took on and how it offers a guide for how the Prince Rupert Council may move forward in the future.

More notes on the work of Prince Rupert City Council can be reviewed from our archive page here.

Cross posted from the North Coast Review.