El Paso Deputy City Manager on leave is candidate for Des Moines top position
El Paso Deputy City Manager Jane Shang, who is now on administrative leave, is a candidate for the top position in Des Moines, Iowa.
According to the Des Moines Register, Shang is one of four candidates considered for the city manager position. The previous city manager, Rick Clark, retired in May after 41 years as a city employee, the newspaper reported.
Des Moines, the capital of the Hawkeye State, has nearly 600,000 residents.
Shang, who is still listed as deputy city manager in El Paso, was placed on administrative leave through the end of the year. City officials won’t disclose why, saying only it is a “personnel matter.”
According to an investigation by our news partners at El Paso Inc., Shang went on a European vacation at the end of April and returned to find out outgoing city manager Joyce Wilson had placed her on leave with pay through December. After that, Shang is expected to exhaust her vacation, which would take her to April 2015.
Shang’s annual salary is $175,000, the Inc. Reported.
As deputy city manager of the city’s Mobility Portfolio in El Paso, Shang oversees the departments of transportation, international bridges, mass transit, engineering & construction management, general services and coordinates with the Public Service Board.
Here’s the bio provided by the city of Des Moines:
Jane Shang
Ms. Shang is currently Deputy City Manager of El Paso, TX (population: 700,000), a position that she has held since 2008. Prior to that, she served as Director of Engineering and Development for the Hillsborough Area Rapid Transit Authority in Tampa, FL and prior to that as a Manager at Logan Airport in Boston, MA. Ms. Shang possesses 25 years of directly related experience in public sector positions in
Texas, Florida and Massachusetts. Ms. Shang possesses a Juris Doctorate degree from the Suffolk University School of Law in Boston, MA and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Organizational Behavior and Business from Brown University in Providence, RI.
Ms. Shang has considerable experience in public sector law; budgeting; human resources; customer service; building maintenance; bus operations; engineering and construction; international bridges and trade development; parks management; streets and roadways; traffic management; economic development; finance; project planning and implementation; service delivery; and construction. She currently manages a city staff of seven direct reports, including department directors (in a city with 6,500 employees) and she currently manages a total annual operating budget of $160M and a capital budget of $1B.
References for Ms. Shang cite some of her strengths as very knowledgeable about city procedures; tenacious; solid background in budgets and human resources; good speaker; very effective in small groups; and a very good writer. Other attributes include her ability to deal well with internal stress; high integrity; much experience with transportation and public works; and her track record of using transportation as a development tool in a border city with tough politics.
Ms. Shang is a 2013 graduate of Leadership Texas and she has received outstanding performance awards from MASSPORT and from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She was also admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1985.
The other Des Moines city manager candidates include the deputy city manager from Dayton, Ohio and city managers from suburbs of Chicago (Elgin) and Kansas City (Lee’s Summit).
The City Council will conduct interviews with them July 8-9.
