The City of Newport has added another layer of bureaucracy with the hiring of Teresa Crean as the new Director of Resilience and Sustainability—a position created seemingly out of thin air, costing taxpayers $155,000 annually, plus benefits. Crean will now oversee three key departments: Planning and Economic Development, Public Services, and Utilities—all of which are already run by seasoned directors, many with more experience than she has.
Crean’s background includes working for the Town of Barrington and serving as a community planner with the University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Center and Rhode Island Sea Grant.
More telling is what this hiring reveals about new City Manager Colin Kennedy, whose qualifications have been under scrutiny since he took the helm. By bringing in someone like Crean, it seems Kennedy may be relying on new hires to manage responsibilities he might not be qualified to handle himself. Instead of trusting the experienced leaders already in place, the city is creating positions that appear to add little more than bureaucratic bloat. In fact, the new city manager is seeking to hire a deputy city manager with an annual salary upwards of $200,000—requiring minimum qualifications that Kennedy himself does not meet according to Newport’s City Charter.
Locals may remember Crean from her work on the City’s Sea AWARE campaign in 2013, but whether she’s the right person to oversee three major departments—already staffed by experts—is another question. Newport’s residents are left wondering: Is this another sign that the city’s leadership is in over its head?
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