This week, Stuart Ed started as the new city manager for the City of Las Cruces. He sat down with Samantha Sonner to talk about what he hopes to achieve in the city.
Stuart Ed, is a former Army Officer, who’s held various jobs at the city of El Paso, and worked for Goodwill Industries. Ed says he hopes to bring his background and experience to Las Cruces.
“I’m also very service oriented,” Ed said. “It started out growing up as a military brat. My father was a career army officer, and so I believe in service. So, those kinds of principles are going to spread through the organization. We’re going to be a service-oriented organization. We’re going to work for our community, we’re going to be accessible for our community, and we’re going to work very friendly for our community.”
Ed says he is starting with the city already in a good position.
“The city of Las Cruces in terms of public administration and the organization,” Ed said. “Is very well-run. My predecessor Mr. Robert Garza did a fantastic job, and left a real legacy of excellence, so stepping in to the organization. It’s also very well led. We have a fantastic Mayor and Council, longstanding leadership.”
Ed says he wants to start by meeting as much of the community as he can.
“My first 30 days it’s important to listen,” Ed said. “So, I want to go around to the community, I want to go around to the organization, I want to talk to the Mayor and Council. And I just want to listen to see what the things are that we do very well, and what are some of the things that we need to resource and that we need to address.”
Ed says he wants to continue economic development efforts and job creation in Las Cruces.
“We need to get out of silos,” Ed said. “We need to be very inclusive. We need to understand what our roles are. The roles of city government I believe is to provide a real quality of place, which means quality of life improvements, our streets, our infrastructure, our parks. All of our facilities need to attract people, families, businesses.”
Ed says he also wants everything done at the city to be very transparent.
“I’m very focused on quality customer service,” Ed said. “Of responsiveness, and also of transparency, and so everything we do is not only going to be efficient and effective, but it’s also going to be transparent. And we’re going to be results driven, but also process driven.”
If you’d like to get in touch with City Manager Stuart Ed, you can send him an email at sed@las-cruces.org.
