1. Running a city has its surprises
Anna Foster | Posted: Monday, February 11, 2002 12:00 am
Temple official learns day-to-day on job
While the field of city management brings to mind images of people poringover drainage plans or fixing pot holes, for Redmond Jones,
it has occasionally been much more excitingthan that: in the course of his duties, he's both been shot at and discovered a dead body.
And while instances such as that, which he says have been thankfully rare in his career, do liven up his job, it is the day-to-day activities
of helping run a city that Jones, 34, finds best about his job as assistant to City Manager Mark Watson.
Having grown up in the strong-mayor city of Cleveland, Jones said when he found his way to the field of urban management in college --
his interest at first was in criminal law -- he "didn't even really know what it was and what it did," although he soon found he "lovedit."
Under the tutelage of Cleveland State University professor Sylvester Murray, the first black city manager of a major American city,
Jones realized he had found his calling.
He received an internship with the city of Las Vegas, Nev., and his project was to aid in the use of a Department of Housing and Urban
Development grant for a project in a distressed area of the city.
During the first trip to the area, however, "some people took pot shots at our car," said Jones, who can laugh about it now. Although he
said they never discovered who they hadbeen mistaken for, on every subsequent trip, "we took city vehicles and everybody had city
shirts so there would be no confusion on who we were."
Jones said the project was worth it, however, as on a trip back a few years after his internship was over, the area was like "night and day"
from how it had been before.
After receiving his degree from Cleveland State, Jones enteredthe leading city management master's program at Kansas State University,
where less than 15 students a year are acceptedinto the master's of public administration program.
During that time he had an internship with the city of Fort Worth, an "eye-openingexperience" where he worked on police and
community relations projects at a time the city was dealing with accusations of racial profiling.
"After that, I said I wanted to go to a smaller community andsee what that's like," Jones said.
He spent three years in human resources at Lee Summit, Mo., before comingto Temple, where the diversity of the community --
"Temple has a very large Hispanic community comparedwith communities I've worked with in the past" -- and the chance to really get
into the city management side of things were selling points.
Jones said although for the most part, his race -- Jones is the first black person to work in Temple's city manager's office -- has not been a
factor in his Temple projects, he thinks his presence can be reassuring for some minorities and encourage them to communicate with
their city hall.
"When some people see me, they feel like they're gettinga fair shake," even if he is not the person who ultimately works on their
problem, Jones said. "That's one thingthat's a benefit."
For the two years he has been in Temple, Jones has been working on downtown projects such as new buildings for the Social Security
and Agriculture Department offices, code enforcement, animal control, East Temple projects, andhandlingcomplaints that come into the
city manager's office, which is how he happenedto be investigatinga blocked drainage ditch last December when a body was
discovered.
Watson said Jones had been doing well in adapting to the variety of projects he was handling, and he sees the position as a training
ground for city managers.
"Many city managers are reaching retirement age and there is a demand for managers, minorities in particular," Watson said. " Getting
people in those leadership positions is critical."
Watson said although Jones' race was not really a factor in his hiring -- Jones' degree from Kansas State, where Watson is also an
alumnus, was a bigger factor, the city manager said with a smile -- it has sometimes been a boon.
"It's been nice to be able to send a representative from the city manager's office to say, the east side or other area of town, and people can
see that it's important,"Watson said. "He can relate to parts of the city that might have distancedthemselves from city hall."

2. Jones said when he does think about race matters, "it kindof gives you a sense of responsibility, to make a good go of it, m ake a good
showing," but mostly he just tries to remember why he is in city management at all by keeping images of the development in Las Vegas
in mind.
"I try to keep focused, because it is so easy to get in the office and shuffle papers and not put faces to names," he said. " You can really
help a lot of people through city management. You might not have a road named after you, but going back and seeing the difference you
made, that's the good part of it."