Experience. Vision. Passion. Gets things done.

Those are some of the words that have come up related to the person Salisbury City Council hired last week as city manager. Lane Bailey, 51, has been city manager in Lenoir for more than 10 years, and he has a total of 25 years of experience in government.

A 2007 profile of Bailey reveals some of his style. David Barlow, then mayor of Lenoir, was interviewed by the Lenoir News Topic. Here’s some of what Barlow said about Bailey:

“His management style is to not let something sit and to not be passive. What I like about him is his vision and passion. He gets things done. …

“He’s not afraid to suggest things and propose things. The council and I don’t always agree with him, but that’s his job to call them as he sees it. But I know that when I ask him to follow up on something, I can depend on him to do that. And that’s vitally important to me as mayor.”

Bailey’s hiring last week was timely, overlapping with City Council’s annual retreat. Council members outlined several goals for the year, starting with aggressively marketing the city and its Fibrant fiber-optic broadband system.

Council members talked about beginning to pay back the $7.6 million the city borrowed from the water and sewer fund to help launch Fibrant. That will be a somewhat familiar scenario for Bailey. When he took the Lenoir job, the city was borrowing from its water enterprise fund to keep its undesignated fund balance above the minimum allowed by the Local Government Commission.

Bailey was part of the team that successfully recruited Google to build a data center in Lenoir in 2007. Google invested nearly $600 million in its campus initially and announced a $600 million expansion in 2013. Landing Google in the first place involved city, county and state officials working together toward a common goal.

Salisbury City Council exercised patience and good judgment in extending the search for a city manager until council members felt they had the right person for the job. They could not have done that without a solid interim in John Sofley. They all deserve thanks and credit. The city has hired a highly qualified, experienced city manager who is accustomed to tackling big projects, working with other local governments, finetuning budgets and getting things done.

Welcome, Lane Bailey.