Daniels still interested in top city slot
Ontario airport manager selected as an alternate by elected leaders

Ontario Municipal Airport Manager Alan Daniels looks over a set of plans in his office Friday. Daniels was one of three local candidates to apply for the Ontario city manager position, but he was selected as one of the alternates.

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“It’s not rocket science,” Daniels said, adding he thinks the city leaders and management need to return the focus of what the city is supposed to do for its residents. He said city residents purchase services from the city that they can’t otherwise purchase themselves, such as water, sewer, emergency services and parks. Residents, he said, expect a return for their investments — a higher standard of living.

He said for the city to become more prosperous, its government needs to present a stable front to the community and interested developers. Daniels said people want a mature, stable, responsive city government. He said residents and developers need to feel comfortable when doing business in a city, and they get turned off by instability and infighting. The key is to allow for multiple points of view without letting the arguments turn personal.

“You don’t want to get where there’s no dissent because you don’t get good solutions,” Daniels said.

He said, while he thinks he is a good, capable candidate for the city manager position, he will not hold it against the City Council should members not choose him, nor will he not establish a good working relationship with whomever the council does choose.

He said, like him, the City Council is working for one goal — improving Ontario, and the only difference between any of the members is they just have different ideas of what needs to be done to achieve that goal. Daniels said he can accept whatever decision is made by the council, and it won’t effect his job at the airport or his interest in improving Ontario. Ontario Mayor Joe Dominick said he has no doubt Daniels has some qualities that would benefit a city manager, which is why he made it so far in the consideration process. In fact, he said, the City Council directed Prothman Company, the consulting firm hired to aid in the process, to interview the top local candidate in its call backs because the council wanted consideration given to local people as well as others.

“Mr. Daniels has some interesting qualities as a leader that kept him as an alternate,” Dominick said. “He also has some good qualities in the number of grants he has received for the city of Ontario. He has some unique information about his application that kept his interest with the council as an alternate.”

Ontario City Councilman Dan Cummings said, for him, it came down to a matter of experience when the council made its final decisions for the top five candidates. Both he and Dominick said the council was not told which candidates to select by Prothman Company. Instead, he said, council members made those decisions themselves, although Cummings said Prothman offered opinions on each of the candidates. In Daniels’ case, Cummings said, he felt, by himself, Daniels needed a little more experience to be considered. Cummings said, with all the turnover the city has experienced and the current vacancies in positions, such as public works director, he feels the city needs a manager where the learning curve won’t be as steep. The city, he said, needs somebody with the experience to step in and take over without a long training period.

“Alan’s a super-good man, and I kind of wished he could have met all the qualifications,” Cummings said, adding, could it be arranged somehow, he thinks Daniels would be an ideal person for an assistant city manager. Then, Cummings said, should the position come open again, the city would have somebody ready and capable to step in.

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