With Cabinet choices made, Williams faces the future

Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams is now in his second week of running the city, his Cabinet is largely in place, and some people are wondering how much of a new day is dawning, given the relatively small amount of new blood found in the Cabinet.
Expecting the mayor to come into City Hall with a new broom and sweep the place clean simply wasn't realistic. There are a number of reasons why.
For one thing, the city is large enough that it needs people with some kind of institutional memory to give its departments a sense of continuity. But it's small enough that with the notable exception of the police and fire departments, most city offices don't have enough employees to provide much depth.
For another, the city is hampered by the Charter's residency requirement and by the city's salary structure from appealing to some of the best and the brightest from outside the area. Not that we're saying that the residency requirement should be dropped or that it is feasible for Youngstown to pay enough to lure a midlevel manager from another city to a department head's job here when the job candidate is already making as much as Youngstown's mayor .
The result
The reality of the situation is that Williams has assembled a Cabinet that he is comfortable with, one based largely on the recommendations of his screening committee and one that will now have to produce on his campaign promises.
In a brief interview, Williams was careful not to disparage any member of former Mayor George McKelvey's Cabinet or to suggest that any members of his cabinet -- whether they be new or holdovers -- were his second choices.
That said, it is clear that a national search -- abbreviated and limited as it may have been -- did not produce a flood of applicants rushing toward Youngstown.
A cynic might say the mayor has done the best with what he had. Williams, however, is emphatic that he is pleased with a Cabinet that balances continuity with some new faces.
And, clearly, Williams' Cabinet is not written in stone; at least two of the holdover appointments will be eligible for retirement before the new mayor's first four-year term is up.
Williams reappointed Fire Chief John J. O'Neill Jr., Law Director Iris Torres Guglucello, Finance Director David Bozanich, and Carmen S. Conglose Jr., deputy director of public works.
He promoted Jimmy Hughes, a police captain to chief, and John Casciano from the water department's auditor and office manager to water commissioner. He hired Jay Macejko, a Mahoning County assistant prosecutor, as city prosecutor.
And he gave a provisional appointment as deputy finance director to Kyle Miasek, who has spent the past 11 years in various financial posts for the state of Connecticut.
Crime fighting
Given the crime situation in the city, the highest profile appointment is that of police chief. One member of the screening committee that Williams used to advise him says Hughes was the committee's unanimous recommendation.
The committee saw Hughes as a chief who will put more officers on the patrol of Youngstown's streets. Williams says that Hughes assured him that the city can do a better job of fighting crime with the resources it has at hand.
The appointment of Casciano puts a water department professional in a post that has traditionally been a political plum. The addition of Miasek to the finance department brings an experienced outsider's perspective to that office.
Regardless of the individual strengths or weaknesses of the appointees or the historic strengths or weaknesses of the departments they now head, the responsibility for getting the most out of them collectively falls to one man, Mayor Jay Williams.
May the mayor, his Cabinet and the city they serve enjoy success.