Upon his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Sparky Anderson, the legendary field manager for the Cincinnati Reds, credited his own professional success to the fact that he recruited good players and wisely “stayed out of their way.”
This deference to the rest of the team certainly makes for great copy in an acceptance speech. But it also embodies a style of leadership that extends far beyond the bounds of the baseball diamond.
There are, in fact, undertones of Anderson’s managerial philosophy in Burlington’s new city manager Bob Patterson – who, coincidently enough, is also the manager of an amateur baseball team when he’s off the clock.
A 28-year veteran of Burlington’s municipal staff, Patterson held a variety of supervisory roles with the city before he was tapped to take over its top administrative post in October. Having effectively played the field within the city’s hierarchy, the 59-year-old civil servant is quick to acknowledge the debt that the city’s day-to-day operations owe to these lower-ranking positions.
“We have a good, strong leadership team within the city, and not only at the department head level. We also have a great staff.”
– Bob Patterson, Burlington’s new city manager
“We have a good, strong leadership team within the city,” Patterson said in an interview earlier this week, “and not only at the department head level. We also have a great staff.”
Patterson’s own career with the city began modestly enough when he joined the staff of its engineering department nearly three decades ago.
A native of Sharon, Pennsylvania, Patterson had obtained his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Pittsburg in 1989. He went on to receive a master’s in civil and environmental engineering from Youngstown State University in Ohio, and for a time, he put this training to work at a local water company in his home state.
In 1997, Patterson and his wife Trish set their sights on North Carolina after they learned of an opening in Burlington’s engineering department from some friends who had been traveling along the East Coast. Patterson ultimately snagged the position in Burlington, where his wife would later obtain her own staff-level posting within the city’s planning department.
As a member of the city’s engineering staff, the future city manager found himself working on projects that ranged from water and sewer expansions to stormwater infrastructure. His expertise in stormwater management eventually led to his transfer to public works, and in 2007, he became the department’s director.
A couple of years later, Patterson was reassigned to the water and sewer department, which was in the midst of a major overhaul due to a state-mandated scheme to clean up Jordan Lake. In order to reduce Burlington’s contribution to the pollutants in the Chatham County reservoir, the city had embarked on a $30-million initiative to upgrade its water treatment plants and strengthen two of its dams. Patterson went on to preside over these changes as the city’s new director of water resources – a title that reflected the addition of storm water management to his purview.
The so-called Jordan Lake upgrades were merely the first in a series of challenges that Patterson had to confront as the head of water resources. Another upheaval came early in 2014 when a deep freeze caused a 60-year-old sewer line to burst, spilling millions of gallons of untreated effluent into the Haw River. This crisis led to threats of legal action from the Haw River Assembly, an environmental advocacy group that’s headquartered downriver of Burlington in Pittsboro. This same organization later took the city to task over the discharge of “forever chemicals” by certain Burlington-based industries, and it ultimately fell to Patterson to mediate between these companies and the environmental advocates in Pittsboro.
“We’re in the people business. We’re here to serve our citizens, and all our departments, with the exception of a few internal functions, are providing some service to the public.”
– New Burlington city manager Bob Patterson
Despite its technical nature, Patterson’s work for the city has involved a fair amount of public relations, as demonstrated by his diplomatic intervention with the Haw River Assembly. But the newly-minted city manager admits that there are few areas of city government where some measure of people skills isn’t required.
“We’re in the people business,” he insists. “We’re here to serve our citizens, and all our departments, with the exception of a few internal functions, are providing some service to the public.”
Patterson’s ability to navigate the dicey currents of community engagement appears to have gotten the attention of someone within Burlington’s leadership.
Over the summer, Patterson was promoted to an open assistant city manager’s position just one day after then-city manager Craig Honeycutt announced his retirement. Then, about five weeks ago, Burlington’s city council appointed Patterson to succeed Honeycutt when he formally stepped down on October 30.
Before his elevation to the city manager’s post, Patterson had already assumed the title of manager in his extracurricular avocation of amateur baseball.
Since 2007, the future city manager had been on the roster of a recreational ball club called the Alamance Giants, and in 2017, he added the duties of field manager to his role as a player. In 2022, Patterson led the team’s members to a national championship in the 50-plus age bracket – an achievement that seems to bode well for his incipient tenure as Burlington’s city manager.
Patterson concedes that his time at the helm of city government has, so far, been free of any similar excitement.
“There hasn’t been anything unexpected,” he acknowledged on Monday. “But this is also just the beginning of week two.”
