Right in the City

About the Book

    Douglas W. Ayres did "right and good" for his government employers by following hard lessons learned in his poverty stricken youth when dealing with men who never missed a meal. From fact-to-face conflicts with men like Gray Davis, currently Governor of California, to Jack Kent Cooke, owner of the NBA Lakers, he learned how to get things done the RIGHT way for citizens who never knew it.
    He built parks, police protection, parking structures, public buildings, water systems, paramedic support, airports and other beneficial things in communities where the power structure wasn't sure they wanted those things.
    To keep a superior group of employees from being fired enmasse for non-residency in the city limits he orchestrated an amendment to the constitution of the State of California.
It's all part of being a good city manager.
It's all here, in this series of unrelated anecdotes that spell one message: it takes work. Hard work. And smart work!

About the Author

Doug Ayres likes to work. He started parking cars at the famous Greenbrier Hotel in West virginia, worked his way thru college and then managed his way thru almost a half-century as a city manager or a manger of city managers.
At first he worked to get ahead. Then he worked because he was good at it and enjoyed it. Then three major graduate schools asked him to teach how he did what he did. Now he works and writes to get even.
Enthusiasm, the great elixir, is in his blood. Retirement meant boating his way through every inland waterway and along each coast of the U.S. and Canada. It took ten years, during which time he wrote about his peccadilloes, intrigues, victories, and defeats and especially about the flaming egos he encountered during his five decades at the highest levels of government. His dog Thunder led the way in boating and in discerning the patterns followed by elected officials - the "dogs" Doug had to support before his loyal pooches Thunder and Lightning came along to sniff out the imposters.
As a reader will see, in Right In The City, a Dog's Tale, Ayres worked well at telling his readers what it's like being a city manager - the good, the bad - and the warts. And how the warts got there or were exorcised.