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For more than 80 years, Borghesi Building & Engineering Co., Inc. has provided quality and reliability with design and energy efficient construction. With on time construction, Borghesi Building & Engineering Co., Inc. will create a smooth transition from construction to completion. Building Ideas That Work... CROWLEY FORD, PLAINVILLE SULLIVAN HONDA, TORRINGTON Contact us at 860.482.7613 or visit us at BorghesiBuilding.com 2155 East Main Street Torrington, Connecticut 06790 © 2011 BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. All rights reserved. Butler Manufacturing ™ is a division of BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. SULLIVAN JEEP, TORRINGTON No matter what brand of vehicle you purchase, you want to sure that it is reliable. Choosing a builder should be no different. For more than 80 years, Borghesi Building & Engineering Co., Inc. has provided quality and reliability with design and energy efficient construction. With on time construction, Borghesi Building & Engineering Co., Inc. will create a smooth transition from construction to completion. Auker also said there is a benefit to bringing in people with a business perspective. "Where the advantages come is, when you're a businessman you're a customer or a client of cities and the state," he said. Having that perspective will prove valuable in helping the city deal with business customers, he said. The administration also will benefit from its business members' experience in management, and their ability to both understand and articulate priorities, Auker said. "It's a matter of understanding your people, what their strengths are, equipping them and then getting out of the way so they can go do what they know needs to be done," he said. Arulampalam said he already sees the benefits. "We have really broad-ranging discussions internally, and there are new ideas every day," he said. "I think that the mixing and melding of experiences and ideas just leads to a better product in the end. I think we're able to better serve our city because of it." Auker has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Brown University in Rhode Island, but said his experience building a workforce division at Infosys that included working closely with city officials, along with his work with ReadyCT and the Workforce Council, have combined to give him valuable insights that will help in his new role. "Most importantly, it got me really deep into the role that businesses play in the community, the benefit that they bring," he said. Auker said his areas of focus will include supporting economic devel- opment to increase the grand list by making Hartford "the easiest city in the state to do business with." That effort has already included the mayor appointing Don Chapman as director of the newly created Office of the Business One-Stop, intended to help small businesses navigate city bureaucracy. Auker also said that while the insurance and financial services sectors are the "heart and soul of the city," he believes Hartford has an opportunity to attract advanced manufacturing companies and emerging industries, like the "quantum corridor," which is a state- wide effort to develop companies involved in quantum computing. 'A big deal' While the mayor maintains a positive outlook on hiring business executives, that doesn't mean there aren't potential challenges. For one, executives accustomed to the privacy of the corporate world may need time to adjust to the public transpar- ency of government. Public initiatives also tend to move more methodically than in the corporate envi- ronment, which could lead to frustration with the process. "A business person in a public agency is not automatically a good thing, and it's not automatically a bad thing," said Muhammad Alkadry, director of the School of Public Policy at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. On the positive side, he said, is that business executives who are willing to give up the financial bene- fits of the private sector are those who "want to give back to their community through public service." "That's a big deal," he said. However, the attraction of better financial benefits in the private sector could be too hard to ignore for long. Alkadry agreed with Auker that business execs "understand how the private sector works, so they know what arguments to make to the private sector. People who always work in the public sector don't know the private sector as well." On the negative side, he said, business people may have a difficult time getting acclimated to the vastly different environment in which very public criticism comes from a variety of sources. "In the public sector, they're running the city and getting essen- tially what looks like abuse from the media, the public, the elected officials," he said. "It's a different environment that they have to operate in." In addition, accountability means something different in the private sector vs. the public sector, he said. "As people in the public sphere, we hold them to a different stan- dard," Alkadry said. Arulampalam said he did his best to prepare his business hires for what to expect. "Well, I think they all came into the job knowing that I was pretty clear about the upsides and downsides of the role," the mayor said. "I think they all came in pretty clear-eyed about it. And I think if you talk to them, they're all having a really good time and feel really validated by the kind of difference they are making in the city." Alkadry noted that, regardless of their backgrounds, it's the results that matter for government officials. Arulampalam believes he's made good hiring choices. "We've been able to recruit really talented people to City Hall," he said. "I think that's a testament to the team, and I think it's a testament to the vision we've laid out." Muhammad Alkadry