PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Philadelphia city government has a new chief operating officer as veteran department head Carlton Williams has begun his tenure as managing director.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
After 26 years in city government, Williams has landed the top job. \u201cI love serving the city of Philadelphia, and to have the opportunity to work at this level is amazing. This is a dream job,\u201d he told KYW Newsradio.<\/p>\n
Williams has led the Streets Department and Department of Licenses and Inspections, and has served as deputy commissioner for Parks and Recreation. Most recently, he created the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives for Mayor Cherelle Parker.<\/p>\n
However, he said the magnitude of his new job presents a new kind of pressure. \u201cThis is the key office for citizen service,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are 36 departments under the managing director\u2019s office, so that seems to be overwhelming at times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moreover, Williams did not get the chance to ease into the job. Hours before he took the reins, an off-duty police officer was shot<\/a> in the city\u2019s Eastwick section.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen those things happen, it\u2019s the reality that it\u2019s part of the job,\u201d he shared. \u201cIt gave me a first-hand look at some of the challenges and the pain those incidents cause, and why we need to work together to stop violence in the city of Philadelphia.\u201d<\/p>\n There have been a lot of meetings and introductions as Williams gets acquainted with the departments under his purview. He also represented the Parker administration at a Fire Academy graduation. <\/p>\n Still, he said he expected to be out in the community a lot, as he was in his previous positions. That will distinguish him from his predecessor, Adam Thiel<\/a>. Thiel\u2019s first act when he started was an all-caps memo forbidding city workers from speaking to the public, even through social media. Williams said that would change.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m always going to be an accessible, open person. I believe in transparency,\u201d he said. \u201cI certainly love to talk to the public on issues, good or bad, because that\u2019s how I learn. That\u2019s how I improve things.\u201d<\/p>\n Williams said maintaining momentum in Kensington<\/a> would be a key objective, and that one of his first tasks would be closing new waste disposal contracts, a contentious issue because of efforts to stop the city from burning its trash<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Philadelphia city government has a new chief operating officer as veteran department head Carlton…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1012016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,37387,142687,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-1012015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-america","tag-city-government","tag-managing-director","tag-pa","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1012015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1012016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1012015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1012015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1012015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}