Interim City Administrator Lee Walton had nearly cleared his desk by mid-afternoon Monday, when he took a few minutes to visit with the local press.

“For a city this size, I’ve never seen so much paperwork,” he told us. “I don’t really know why that is so, but we do seem to have an awful lot of process here without getting a lot done.”

A career city manager who now takes on interim assignments, Walton is giving our city a fresh look through experienced eyes. And he is sharing his thoughts with refreshing candor, both in person and through an informal newsletter to the staff; his comments offer some interesting insights into the management style citizens will see while he’s in charge.

Walton’s first observation: “We’re trying to do too much.”

“The mayor’s outline of a work plan for council’s consideration … reminds me a bit of Steven Hawking’s quest to develop ‘a unified theory of everything,’” he wrote to city staff. “Suffice it to say, we will certainly give it our best efforts.”

Another observation: Too many people are paying too much attention to too many details. That starts at the top of the administration.

“I need to have a little father-daughter talk with the mayor,” Walton told us. “She needs to leave the details to me and concentrate on the bigger issues.”

One thing Walton has learned during his career, he told us is that some “problems” don’t really need to be solved. His personal filing system, he says, includes a category of “things it’s too late to do anything about,” which he frequently, guiltlessly and painlessly empties into the circular file.

On lines of authority between the council and the city staff, he offers the following – worthy of consideration by both groups – in a memo to the council:

“Until the mayor/council makes a decision, I should be free to give you my advice, argue my case and even lobby the council. However, once the council has made its decision, I will actively support it, not just passively acquiesce to it. From my experience, the worst disease that can afflict a city is having staff design advice to anticipate what the council wants to hear rather than what they honestly believe as professionals to be correct.”

Criticism, Walton says, comes with the territory, but he wants to avoid personal sniping.

“I have found too much public criticism or pressure on employees to avoid errors too frequently cause them to minimize the risk of criticism by avoiding making decisions.”

What he wants, he says, is a chain of command.

“When public criticism is appropriate, as it sometimes is, I would ask that it be directed at me as the city administrator. I will, of course, subsequently, in private, take the department head to task.”

Walton makes other observations that deserve consideration: the need for a flat-fee schedule for planning applications (a matter currently under debate), in-house legal services (not a priority with mayor or council), and better financial discipline in the face of tighter budgets in coming years (to which, we suspect all will agree).

Walton’s tenure will be limited, but as an experienced, plain-spoken and eminently practical administrator, he could be a “caretaker” whose prescriptions outlast his service.