Jill Schramm/MDN Minot City Manager Tom Joyce stands in City Hall, where messages on the wall remind city staff about their mission.

Tom Joyce is bringing a people-centered focus to city government as the City of Minot’s latest city manager.

Joyce was appointed by the Minot City Council in October, although he had been serving in an interim role since August, when former city manager Harold Stewart left to take a similar position in Pasco, Washington.

Joyce first joined the city two years ago as assistant city manager.

In accepting the city manager position, Joyce stressed his view of the job as one of relationship building.

“Part of that is just treating everybody with dignity and respect and civility,” Joyce said. “As the leader of an organization, my number one responsibility is to build the type of organizational culture that I think is necessary to do the kind of work we’re doing, and then just keep doing things to sustain it. Again, it starts with people, and I think we’re doing great, and we’ll just keep it up.”

Joyce already has introduced team-building workshops, increased the frequency of employee recognition events and is encouraging building leadership from within, with an eye on succession planning.

“My primary focus for my team – I can say for 2026 but it’ll always be that way – is to be people centric. Focus on our people. Take care of those that we currently have on the team. Ensure that we develop them appropriately and work to retain them. Things like recognition are important to do that. We’re going to take a deeper dive into the wages and benefits in ’26 to see if we want to propose any changes to council for ’27,” he added.

There’s also movement toward filling the vacant assistant city manager position. Joyce had utilized his knowledge strengths in public works when he served in the role, but he expects some tweaks will be made to give the new assistant more oversight over day-to-day administrative functions while he focuses on the major departments.

In terms of community relationship-building, Joyce said the role of city manager has opened doors for him to get more acquainted with other community leaders.

He would like to see the public sector, businesses and nonprofits come together to better understand what each is doing. The more they understand what each other is doing, the more they can support each other, he said.

One area of community concern is an increased housing issue with a large manufacturer planning to come to Minot and the Sentinel missile upgrade on the horizon. Meetings have been held with builders, developers and bankers on the topic. Input has been welcomed on any obstacles to development on the city’s side, Joyce said.

It’s the type of challenge that can prompt people to roll up their sleeves and go to work on a solution, Joyce said.

“And certainly the resilience and the persistence of the people that live here – that’s the makeup there. I don’t think that’ll be an issue. People will come together. We’ll get it done,” he said.

He is taking a similar attitude toward what he expects to be another difficult season of budget development.

“We have constrained resources. We’ll have competing priorities coming up from the departments,” he said. “We need to take a hard look at all of those to prioritize.”

He said the budget process and involvement of the council members will look similar this year, but work on the budget will start even earlier. There’s also interest in entering the budget discussions with a target spending level in mind, especially in the general fund that affects property taxes, he said.

The city faces some pressing projects in the future, from repairs to the Third Street Bridge to remodeling of the police station to paving Sunset Boulevard.

“I’d rather have more projects than not. That means, to me, that we are a community that cares,” Joyce said. “I don’t think that we have anything that we can’t do. We have to prioritize sometimes.

“Overall, I’m comfortable where we’re going,” he added. “And again, we’ve got a great team, and I’m looking forward to maybe, in the next few months, having an assistant city manager to help with all this.”