AUBURN — City Manager Glenn Aho is scheduled to discuss his controversial restructuring of municipal staff in November, part of the fall lecture series at the University of Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service.

“We did a lot and we learned from all of it,” Aho said. “There are things I would keep and things I would do differently.”

Aho is scheduled to present his restructuring plan and answer questions from students at a Nov. 9 presentation at the Wishcamper Center on the University of Southern Maine Campus in Portland. The lecture is free and open to the public, he said.

Sara Litwiller, assistant to the dean for communications at the Muskie School, said the lecture series is designed to bring discussions about contemporary Maine politics to students and members of the community alike. 

Other speakers scheduled for the November speaker series include Craig Freshley, owner and president of ethics think tank Good Group Decisions, and Kenneth Palmer, University of Maine political science professor emeritus.

Aho and his staff began working on the new management plan last summer, after councilors adopted a budget that both trimmed spending and raised taxes. He unveiled the new structure last spring, saying it would make city management more nimble, efficient and responsive to resident needs.

The plan reorganizes city hierarchies — with fewer people reporting directly to Aho — standardizes services and creates testable benchmarks for city employees.

“But we did it all quickly,” Aho said. “If I had it to do over, I think I might have taken more time to think about what the council wanted, to consider some of the consequences.”

Aho said changes put significant pressure on city staff. Residents’ taxes went up, but staffing was reduced. That meant city services were cut, frustrating residents and employees.

“One question we didn’t consider was how all these changes effected our employees,” Aho said. “Change causes stress, and have we been as supportive of the employees as we could have?”

But Aho said city staff helped draw up a new organizational chart and it has been a success.

“We were one of the few local governments that actually did react to the demands of the new economy,” Aho said. “We were asked to do more with less and I think we’ve been mostly successful.”

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