Assistant City Manager

The Role:

A Core Executive Seat in Waco’s Infrastructure and Development Platform

The Assistant City Manager will serve as a principal advisor to the City Manager and a key member of the executive leadership team. This role is expected to oversee a portfolio centered on Water Resources, Public Works, Infrastructure Services, and Development Services, Customer Service & Engagement, while also helping ensure alignment across customer-facing and operational functions connected to infrastructure delivery, and service performance, both internally and externally, using data and dashboards.

A particularly important part of this role will be helping the City develop and sustain a more strategic, future-oriented approach to water resources. Waco has already undertaken meaningful long-range water planning, including integrated resource planning around reclamation, new sources, and long-term availability, but the next Assistant City Manager will be expected to help continue to focus on water resource strategy and turn that planning into an actionable implementation agenda.

This means working with staff to connect long-range water strategy to the City’s five-year CIP, maintaining momentum on current delivery needs while ensuring that critical future investments are sequenced, funded, and not crowded out by more immediate demands. The successful candidate will understand how to operate in both horizons at once, driving today’s infrastructure work while helping prepare the city for its next ten to twenty years of growth and water demand.

This is a heavy operational and implementation-focused executive role. It is not simply a coordination post. The next ACM will help lead the City’s water resources, infrastructure and development platform at a moment when Waco needs both disciplined project delivery now and stronger long-range planning for what comes next, especially in water, capital improvements, deferred maintenance, and growth-related infrastructure needs.

This role touches some of the City’s largest and most visible departments.

Public Works is a reorganized department delivering critical field and maintenance functions across Public Works Administration, Maintenance, Utilities, Safety, Solid Waste, and Streets, including traffic and drainage. Its FY26 budget is $96.2 million, and the department includes 308 FTEs.

Infrastructure Services is responsible for essential infrastructure solutions through Engineering, Transportation, Water and Wastewater Treatment, and Development. The department provides deep technical capacity in engineering design, water and wastewater treatment, transportation planning, and stormwater management, and has an FY26 budget of $ with 153.475 FTEs.

Development Services supports the orderly, safe, and responsible development of Waco through Planning, Inspections, and Code Compliance. The department is advancing several meaningful FY26 priorities, including new permitting and inspection software, updated building and electrical codes, the implementation of an efficiency study, a proactive multifamily inspection program, zoning ordinance updates to support downtown and infill development, and the completion of a historic resources survey.

Its FY26 budget is $5,886,711, and it includes 46 FTEs.

Customer Engagement is a newly formed department created to unify key customer-facing service functions into a more coordinated service platform. The department brings together the Call Center and Customer Care Team, revenue collections, customer billing, customer support, and meter services to improve communication, streamline service processes, and deliver a more consistent customer experience. Its work spans first-point-of-contact service, payment and billing support, issue resolution related to leaks and sewer overflows, 811 locate coordination, outage notifications, and meter reading, repair, replacement, and testing.

Customer Engagement also includes responsibility for collections and reconciliation across multiple utility-related funds and reflects the City’s broader emphasis on service integration, responsiveness, and operational…