Meet Oakland Borough Administrator Richard Kunze
As Oakland’s business administrator, Richard Kunze is involved in a wide range of town operations and activities. Kunze, who has worked in Oakland for 10 years, counts as his primarily duties the preparation of the annual budget and advising the mayor and council. It’s no wonder the job of a municipal business administrator often is described around the country as being a town’s CEO. “My job is part management, part leadership, part support,” says Kunze.
In an interview with Borough Newsletter correspondent Terri Casaleggio, Kunze spoke about the services he performs in his position, the advancements Oakland has achieved in past years, as well as what he’d like to see the borough strive for – in technology, for instance – and how the town compares with the three others where he’s worked in his career. The business administrator is a graduate of Montclair State University, where he received his bachelor’s degree in political science, with a minor in public administration. He has been diligent about expanding his knowledge in areas such as budgeting, labor relations and finance, taking courses and receiving certifications.
TC: What are your job responsibilities as borough administrator?
RK: One of my primary responsibilities is to prepare the annual budget for the council's ultimate review. That is done through the finance subcommittee of the council and in close collaboration every year with the chief financial officer and with the department heads and agency heads that are preparing their individual requests. We have a separate process for capital budgeting and capital planning. Anything with long-range planning, by necessity and by right, includes the governing body. What I do is guidance. There my primary responsibility is in an advisory role and a lot of it is collaboration on many things.
TC: So you are steering the ship, as it were?
RK: And rowing, too, depending on the issue. For example, in IT (Information Technology), I do not have an extensive IT background, but I try to identify what the IT needs are. My office serves as the primary coordinator in contact with the IT company we use to maintain our network and we try to identify where we need to go technology-wise as an organization to better serve the public and take advantage of efficiencies.
TC: Would you say as far as technology goes that we are state of the art?
RK: No. I think we are much farther along than when were ten years ago on a comparative basis. But there are still things that we are looking to do. We are continually looking at ways to leverage technology and improve.
For example, doing the new website a couple of years ago, you know, was a huge step. There was a lot of time and effort expended by all parties that went into that. But one of the main drivers wasn't just updating the look and feel and the navigation, as important as those things are. It was also done with a future eye towards wanting to move the organization towards more on-line transactions where you can actually secure permits and licenses. It's built in. It's not utilized yet to the extent we want it to.
It's not just looking at the technology. It's also rolling it out.
We are in the middle of a large project to totally revamp our radio infrastructure. That's nothing necessarily that the public sees, but it's been a tremendous amount of work, not primarily on my part, but on the part of the police department and emergency services and the working group that involves the council to replace a very aged infrastructure with something that is indeed state of the art, and that we try to future-proof it for the next 10 or 15 years.
TC: What would you say are the challenges you have to meet in your job day-to-day?
RK: The bigger picture. It's always in a sense the same struggle the council goes through, too, where you try to meet the current and potentially future needs of the public with the amount of resources that we have in a resource-constraining environment where we have not seen a state aid increase in probably 7 years or so, and you are living within a 2 percent levy cap. You know, property taxes are already very high.
Affordability is probably the single most critical issue. That is really where I try to help the governing body in their decision-making. You have to make hard decisions sometimes. On a larger scale, you want to make sure that you are offering the residents good value for the money that they are paying. And that comes from the services that you offer, how well you offer them and addressing the capital infrastructure needs of the community. It really kind of falls under the umbrella of good governance, that you try to be efficient and effective and do the right things for the right reasons on behalf of the public.
I would say another longer-running challenge that we are facing, if you look at the municipal government as an industry, besides the resource constraint we face with funding – which sounds funny to say that there's a resource constraint there when people complain about high taxes -- but it's also on the personnel side, making sure that you are bringing in good people into the organization. There is a kind of graying of the work force. And there are certainly challenges with how we stock the police department which is so important, as well. But with a lot of the senior leadership that retires and trying to bring new people in, it's been a challenge industry-wide to attract that next generation of people in certain fields.
TC: How do you harness all of this and communicate this to make your department and people who work under you work efficiently and effectively?
RK: When you say "communicate,” it’s really the key. I hold bi-weekly staff meetings usually after council meetings so I make sure the staff understands what's going on at the council level. It's a way to facilitate communication among the departments. And we try to build a culture of respect, respect for each other, respect for ideas, for sharing different ideas. There is this concept of engagement, how do you engage your employees to be committed to their jobs. So, you know, we try to take steps to do that, to make sure people feel valued. You may see a police officer respond to an accident scene. You are not going to think about, well, what's the level of paperwork and time that goes into it afterwards, what the regulations that you have to deal with are, that we all have to deal with. For as much as we are the home rule state, the level of regulation that we deal with, the number of attorney general directives and guidelines and things they have to operate under, it's a lot. To operate our water and sewer systems, there is a tremendous amount. We have whole departments, the health department, code enforcement, that are all based on administering various codes. There's the septic code, building code, fire code, etc.
TC: What skill do you think that you have that makes you successful in communicating to the public and to your employees?
RK: I'd like to think that there is a level of respect that I have for our employees, the volunteers. I'd like to think that comes across and informs my management style.
TC: What would you like the public to know about your job?
RK: Well…that it exists. So it's just that it's there, that my role is kind of, as the name implies, a little bit to oversee the administration of the organization and advise the governing body on policy, and then I am charged with executing their policy and direction on any number of topics, whether it's something regulatory or whether it's specific projects we are involved in. So my job is part management, part leadership, part support.
TC: What do you think of Oakland?
RK: It is a wonderful community. I heard good things about it before I came here and that's been reinforced over the last ten years. It's the nature of the community, the sense of civic pride that I see, the sense of involvement. And with that, I will say we can always use more volunteers. But compared to a lot of our neighbors, what I see when I talk to my peers is that we have a higher degree of volunteerism here than in some other communities. And that speaks very well towards the civic health of the community, which is really critical. I mean, for as much as the health of the community is dependent on how well we deliver services and infrastructure, it's really in large part determined by the citizens themselves. So if you have residents that take pride in their community and want to engage to make it better, that's fantastic. I want to touch upon the quality of the work force here. I have worked in four towns now, worked with some very talented and capable people. But probably as a group, as an entire municipal work force, this is the strongest one I have worked with.
It's pretty much up and down the line here, the people here are well trained, are smart and capable and they really want to do what's right on behalf of the residents.