Earlier this year, Ogdensburg’s city manager formally announced his intention to step down. However, the city’s mayor and a majority of the city council have officially asked him to reconsider, and now, Stephen Jellie is doing just that.

With so many disagreements and even altercations as a result of some city actions to cut back spending, it’s not a clear-cut decision, but City Manager Stephen Jellie said both he and his family hope to give the city a final decision by May 1.

“For me, I had a pretty specific set of goals and objectives that the majority of council asked me to do. I’ve run a good majority of those down,” Jellie said of his position, when he accepted it on what he thought would be a short-term basis.

A month ago, Jellie thought he was done, officially announcing his resignation for later this summer. He came to the city with the short-term goal of reshaping its finances and saving it from bankruptcy. He said he did that.

“We ultimately stabilized the workforce, turned the financial situation around and started to create a positive look towards growth and development,” Jellie said.

However, the reaction to the way he helped decide how to get there was another reason why he was ready to step down. Between layoffs and cutbacks, especially to public safety, Jellie and his family were more than ready to have someone else come in and focus on the long term.

“I think that most people in the city understood that hard decisions needed to be made. The reason they hadn’t been made for years is that they are hard decisions. In doing that, there’s certainly been plenty of people with ruffled feathers, if no other word. There’s been people, you can’t deny the personal impacts on some of the layoffs that we had,” Jellie said.

Now, a month later, things seem to be trending in a different direction. City Mayor Mike Skelly has asked Jellie to reconsider, and Jellie is. Skelly said people have seen the results, everyone laid off has either retired with an incentive package or has been brought back and he even believes personal concerns are no longer as much of an issue.

“He definitely turned this city around. We’ve had a great working relationship, as well as all the staff at city hall,” Skelly said.

The final decision on whether or not to stay on would be Jellie's to make. He has told Skelly that he hopes to have that final decision by sometime around the start of May, which is soon approaching.

Jellie has also been serving as the city’s fire department chief. He said he will stay on that position until someone new is hired, but right now, the city has no candidates that meet the job requirements.