I've seen cities where these sorts of roles are re-classed as an Assistant City Manager (or, in the case of really big strong mayor cities, Deputy Mayor for XYZ) which could help from both a talent attraction and payscale perspective.
I'm curious, how are you managing family expectations with those of the office working so much? Because I found that once I went beyond 40-45 hours in my last job into 50, sometimes 55 hour weeks, relational equity sort of broke down at home and I never made dinner or did after school pickup - it wasn't great for them.
Hold up... I have a family! That's Awesome!
In all seriousness, it works because I am intentional. For my family, if there is something going on, I block those times out on my work calendar to assure that nothing gets put in that slot for both evening and daytime activities. The other is when I am with my family, I am 100% present with them. Not checking e-mails, not watching TV, not being distracted. I also involve my family in the things that I do as well. My youngest enjoys construction and woodworking, so if I am in the woodshop, he is in there helping me. My oldest is into fitness, so Sunday mornings we get up early and go running. (He runs, I try to keep up). My middle son will make movies and we will sit and watch them on his iPad together.
Last, it is about personal discipline and priorities. I get up no later than 4:30 am on weekdays mornings so I have time to go to the gym. On the few mornings that I am home, I recognize that I am not missing anything because the kids will sleep as long as possible and then get ready to go to school and they are out the door. I don't spend time watching TV or scrolling social media. On Saturday's I am up at 5:30 am to watch this old house and have quiet time, but I also use this time to catch up on things from home. Once the family is awake, it is about them. This means I don't watch TV. People are surprised when they will start talking about a show on TV or something, and I will explain that I haven't watched it. There are a couple exceptions for steaming shows, but it is because I watch them with my wife.
Moreso, I let my staff know that I expect them to put their family first. This is a bit of a paradigm shift for some of them. One who attends a lot of night meetings gave me a time off request to attend his kids sporting event. He asked for 3 hours... he had 2 night meetings that week, each took more than 2 hours. I denied the 'time off' request and explained that he already worked those hours and more, and that he needed to go watch his kid and not worry about this place... and save his time off for situations like vacations. Our CM is 100% good with me doing this.
Lastly, my wife and I are starting to go on a lot more date nights and sometimes they blend into work stuff as well. She is always frustrated with it, until she gets there and then has a great time. But we do this at least twice a month now were just the two of us will go out. Sometimes it is only for ice cream, sometimes it is for an anniversary trip just the two of us. This past weekend, my counterpart in the adjacent community and our wives met up at a very nice restaurant and we all had a great time because his wife and my wife were able to tease us for being so "Planner" all the time.
But like I said, it is about being intentional about the quality of time I spend with my family and including them in as much as I can where they will still enjoy it.
