When Bryan Nelson is sworn in as Apopka’s mayor at noon on April 24, he’ll have plenty to do and he says he will need to hit the ground running, but while he’s doing all the day-to-day duties of the mayor of Apopka, Nelson said he also wants to make meeting the city’s more than 440 employees a priority.
The mayor-elect talked about that and much more this week in discussing what his plans are for various issues facing the city when he officially takes office in about a month.
“My first week or so will be getting out to see the employees and say, ‘Listen, I’m your leader, but I need to gain your respect. You don’t owe it to me; I need to earn it,’” Nelson said.
“I think people want a leader who’s going to roll up his sleeves. I don’t mind jumping on a garbage truck some day just to see how that works. I don’t mind going out to the wastewater treatment plant and seeing them do whatever they do just to get a feel for what they do for the city, and what improvements we could make.”
With the city’s budget and spending a hot topic during the recent campaign, Nelson said he also wants to hear from those same city employees on possible ways of saving money.
“One thing I’d like to do pretty early on – and maybe we can have something in the October (2018-2019) budget – is have some kind of incentive to come up with innovative ways of saving money. Maybe it’s a cash bonus; maybe it’s another three days paid leave or something to find innovative ways to save taxpayers money in each of the departments,” the mayor-elect said.
“That’s a way I’d like to incentivize employees to come up with better ways of running our government.”
The full story appears on page 1A of the Friday, March 23, issue of The Apopka Chief.
