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West Chester borough manager lays out 2025 priorities: communication, customer service and performance management
Summary
Borough Manager Sean presented an organizational development plan prioritizing resident-centered service, improved communications and a new performance-management approach; councilors expressed support and urged active university engagement.
Borough Manager Sean presented the borough’s first manager’s report of the year, outlining a multi-part organizational development plan focused on communication and engagement, customer service improvements, performance management, process documentation and staff training.
Sean said the plan emphasizes residents — the borough is “a town with two thirds renters,” he said — and described a new approach to managing staff work and reporting. “We’re implementing a performance management system through our new human resource information system that’s going to be shorter term and project delivery in our goal delivery within 90 or 120 and 20 day horizons instead of having to come back and having a discussion 300 about the last 365 days,” he said during his remarks.
He said outward-facing priorities include an organized approach to web, social media, print, mail and emergency communications, and a goal of improving online access to services such as building-permit submission. Customer service planning will focus on making public interactions “responsive, efficient, direct,” and ensuring staff know who to contact for issue resolution.
Inward-facing priorities in the plan include performance management tied to shorter review intervals, process documentation across departments (the manager noted the police department’s standard operating procedures as a model) and training and team building. Sean said the borough will hold a communications and conflict-resolution training session for managers in the first quarter of 2025 and later roll out service-oriented training to frontline staff.
He also listed an ongoing initiative to improve coordination with West Chester University. Councilors praised the report and said stronger engagement with the university is needed; one councilor referenced the West Chester Community Campus Coalition as an existing structure for that work.
Council members offered supportive comments. One called the manager’s mission statement “well thought out”; another said the list reflected prior council direction and welcomed the focus on residents. The manager said he would meet with the council president and vice president later in the week for follow-up conversations about council-driven priorities.
No formal council action or new budget authorizations were taken during the report; the presentation was informational and councilors asked for further updates as the manager’s team implements the plan.
