NEW CITY BOSS SEEKS TEAM MANAGEMENT

Cape Girardeau City Manager Michael Miller doesn't want team players; he wants team management.

City employees need freedom to ask why things are done a certain way and to recommend changes, Miller told about 20 businessmen at the West End Merchants' Association meeting Tuesday night at Drury Lodge.

Government has a tendency to do things out of habit, he explained.

Team management, he suggested, would make the city more responsive to the public and allow independent thought at the bottom rungs of municipal government.

"This isn't going to happen overnight; it takes time," Miller said.

Miller began his duties as city manager last week.

Miller said his wife, Janice, has two show dogs. She came to Cape Girardeau a few years ago for a dog show and liked the city.

That good impression was one reason why he sought the Cape Girardeau city manager job, he said.

Miller told the merchants he would assist the city in its efforts to land a riverboat casino. Miller views it as an economics issue rather than a moral one. As city manager of Council Bluffs, Iowa, in the early 1980s, he helped secure a dog racing track there.

Miller said city government can help a community grow or delay its death.

He said Cape Girardeau has the water, street and sewer systems that allow it to grow. "You are not being overpowered by the growth."

Government isn't a business, but the job of the city manager is to try to run it like one, Miller said.