CANDIDATE THRIVES ON PEOPLE SKILLS

Michael G. Miller calls himself a people person who relies on skills developed as city manager for seven different cities.

He said he uses those skills to solve problems and carry out the wishes of the city council.

"I like to look at how the city staff is approaching a problem and how it is affecting the people they deal with each day," said Miller, who is one of five candidates for the Cape Girardeau city manager's post.

Miller is the second candidate to interview for the position, which was vacated by J. Ronald Fischer.

"You have to learn how to get past the anger of the customer and to listen to the complaint," Miller said. "Once you do that you can get at the problem and solve it."

Miller is currently operating a one-man consulting company that offers cities ways to organize management teams and set goals.

Miller, 58, a native of the Catskill Mountains in New York, is currently living in St. Louis. He has lived in the Midwest for the past 30 years.

His last stop as a city manager was in Ferguson, Mo., where he held the position for nearly five years.

"Every city manager reaches a point when he realizes it's time to move on to something else," Miller said. "It's just the nature of the beast."

While he was the city manager in Ferguson, Miller literally helped open windows that led to a better rapport between city staff and the public it served.

"Clerks stood behind these windows with round holes in them; the kind you see in banks," he said. "The public felt distanced by the windows but the staff felt they needed them to block the cold air during the winter."

Miller's advisory team decided sliding windows would accommodate both the staff and public.

"They slid them to the side when the public was in the building and then closed them when no one else was in the building," he said, adding:

"The team organizational building and goal-setting wasn't about becoming more friendly. But that's what the staff realized when they attempted to solve the problem."

After earning a bachelor's degree in political science from St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., in 1959, he began his career in city government in 1960 in Pittsburg, Kan.

Miller earned a master's degree from the University of Kansas in 1961, then moved to Slater, Mo., where he became city manager in 1962.

Subsequent stops included Vermilion, S.D., Maplewood, Minn., Council Bluffs, Iowa, St. Joseph and finally Ferguson in St. Louis where he served as city manager from April 1989 until November 1993.

"I'm drawn to cities that have a long history," Miller said. "Those kind of towns have character."

He is also attracted to cities close to rivers.

"That wasn't really by design, but it seems like I've always ended up in a town close to a river," he said.

His first trip to Cape Girardeau brought some pleasant surprises.

"I like the growth going on and the potential to get even bigger," he said. "All I knew about Cape Girardeau is what friends from St. Louis told me and they said it was a nice town; a place I would like to work in."