Radnor Commisioner Talks About His New Role

Radnor Commissioner Don Curley, who represents the West Wayne area of Radnor, has been serving as Bridgeport Borough’s manager for about two weeks.

The paid position in the Montgomery County municipality does not conflict with his role as an elected official in Radnor, Curley said. He is planning on running for re-election this year as commissioner of the township’s 6th Ward.

An engineer by training, Curley has had his own consulting practice and has taught as an adjunct professor, but his work was not enough to make a living, so he decided to make a change, he told Radnor Patch.

Curley, a former member of Radnor’s Planning Commission, has always been interested in the overlap of engineering and public policy. Bridgeport has a wastewater treatment plant and “a unique blend of things I like to do, including a sizeable engineering component,” he said.

“I dealt with these things as a general way. I’m now dealing with them in a particular way,” Curley said. The “hands-on” aspect of the manager job is a positive for Curley, who has no previous experience in such a position.

Curley said Bridgeport residents wanted “an outsider’s perspective” on their borough and their operations, and Curley was hired to bring that. “Their issues are very interesting to me—hiring issues with police department, interfacing with regulators for the plant, community development they’re working on,” he said.

Bridgeport has pension and other post-employment benefits problems, like Radnor and most municipalities. The cause, prospective solution and scale are different, but “nonetheless it’s the same problem.”

Curley said that his work as borough manager will impact how he serves as a commissioner in Radnor. “It’s going to give me a greater understanding of the mechanisms of operation,” he said.

He said Radnor’s manager Bob Zienkowski and solicitor John Rice advised him that there is not a conflict with his being a commissioner in Radnor and manager in Bridgeport.