A national search launched last year for a new chief administrative officer of Burlington has ended just a few miles from where it began.
Saying it is “in many ways the most important appointment I have to make,” Mayor Miro Weinberger announced on Thursday that he has chosen Bob Rusten, a top South Burlington official, to fill the post. Weinberger noted that he had personally interviewed about a dozen candidates for the CAO job.
Rusten, 62, would bring diversified administrative and political experience to the city’s number-two post if confirmed by the city council next week. He currently holds three positions in South Burlington: deputy city manager, chief financial officer and treasurer. He also served 10 years in the Vermont House as a Democrat representing Halifax, which Rusten described at a city hall press conference as a conservative Republican district.
“The person the city needs at this time is someone with deep municipal finance experience,” Weinberger said.
The mayor touted Rusten’s handling of the same thorny assignments he would be given in Burlington: fixing an underfunded pension system, cleaning up a fiscal mess and negotiating sustainable deals with municipal labor unions.
In a memorandum sent to the city council yesterday, Weinberger said Rusten “co-negotiated an $8.2 million refunding of an underfunded pension system.” The mayor also pointed to Rusten’s work on a team that “unearthed the severe nature of South Burlington’s financial troubles” and helped solve “cumulative fiscal problems exceeding $17 million.”
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I guess my only initial concerns or thoughts on the subject would be that South Burlington has not been without issues over the years, but then again maybe this persons ability has kept the inability of the SB city council from not blowing up SB totally.
“…the council’s lone Republican”
Who was that masked man?