Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed Announces that Peter Aman Will Remain Chief Operating Officer until December 2011

Key accomplishments to date include addressing the City’s pension crisis, reducing emergency response times, eliminating fire-station brown-outs, improving critical service delivery and building multi-million reserves for the City

Mayor Kasim Reed formally announced today that Peter Aman, Chief Operating Officer for the City of Atlanta, will serve in that position for an additional year. Scheduled to leave at the end of this calendar year, Aman has decided to continue until December 31, 2011.

“Peter is a transformational leader who has helped me to significantly improve the quality of City services while also streamlining inefficiencies in municipal government,” said Mayor Kasim Reed.

“His knowledge and expertise in addressing the City’s most difficult challenges have been invaluable. I consider myself and the City of Atlanta extremely fortunate to have Peter Aman serve the City for an additional year.”

Aman was confirmed as COO by the Atlanta City Council in January. Since then, he has led the executive management of the municipal operating departments: Corrections, Procurement, Information Technology, Office of Enterprise Assets Management, Aviation, Fire, Police, Human Resources, Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs, Planning and Community Development, Public Works, Watershed Management, Office of Contract Compliance, Emergency Management Services and the external operating agencies.

“I enjoy working with Mayor Reed and the entire Cabinet; it’s been a great experience,” Aman said. “We have a unique opportunity to remake city government, and Mayor Reed’s trust and confidence in me allow me to implement changes that will benefit the City and its residents for years to come. I believe this Administration is in the middle of making positive changes and I am delighted to continue contributing.”

In collaboration with Mayor Reed and key City leaders, Aman’s accomplishments include:

· Dramatically improving fire response times in meeting the nationally recognized standard from 42 percent in January to 70 percent in May 2010;

· Increasing the number of garbage pickups completed on the scheduled day from 85.8% in January to 98.8% in July 2010;

· Implementing $7.4 million of projected savings in the first phase of reforms to the City’s pension plan. The City’s pension liability had risen 13 percent every year over the past ten years;

· Eliminating brown-outs at fire stations within first 100 days of the Reed administration;

· Working closely with Interim CFO Roosevelt Council to control hiring and spending, thereby reducing FY10 expenses by a total of $16M at year end;

· Leading Mayor’s staff that successfully worked with City Council to pass a budget which is both fiscally conservative (about $12 million in operating reductions, pension cost reductions, efficiency gains) and moved the city forward (included $3.7 million to re-open closed recreation centers and funding for 100 new police officer positions);


· Opening seven additional outdoor pools for the summer season and refurbishing all of the 15 City recreation centers that had been closed. The first six opened in August and the remainder will open before year end;

· Improving Code Compliance through a turnaround that included restructuring of code enforcement teams, additional staffing, compliance process redesign as well as city code changes to make response times and processes more efficient;

· Driving immediate management changes in multiple departments and at multiple levels and assisting the Mayor in the recruitment and selection of Commissioners and senior management talent; and

· Reaching out and directly engaging employees at multiple levels of the City, with a special focus on the critical work performed by the front-line employees (e.g., visits to crime scenes, fires, SWAT standoffs, rope rescue, fire stations, police zone offices, pothole repairs, HR, among others).


As a partner at Bain & Company, a global business consulting firm, Aman has helped to transform and turnaround dozens of large and complex multinational media and industrial companies. He also has held several leadership roles in Bain’s Atlanta office, including those in the areas of recruiting, staff allocation and professional development, facilities and information technology operation, risk management and professional standards.

Aman’s deep involvement in the City of Atlanta began in 2002 when he led a pro bono transformation effort by Bain & Company that lasted three years, providing $7 million of donated consulting services. The work by Aman and the Bain team revealed what was then a substantial gap in the city’s operating budget and designed a series of corrective actions, including the development of a comprehensive turnaround plan, a benchmarking of city costs and employment levels versus other comparable cities, the creation of an economic development plan, and a deeper understanding of tax and fee affordability of the city.

Aman has served on the boards of The Atlanta Committee for Progress, The Atlanta Police Foundation, The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, and The Galloway School, among others.

Aman is a graduate of Duke University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy, with honors. He earned an MBA, with distinction, from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.