Worcester's next city manager should be adept at overseeing a large organization, practicing long-range thinking and developing the political muscle to see changes through, according to a panel of experts.

Customers are filling Worcester's JetBlue flights and leaving happy despite higher fares and diverted planes, the CEO of the Massachusetts Port Authority said Wednesday morning.

Timothy McGourthy, Worcester's point man on economic development, will leave his City Hall post to become executive director of the Worcester Regional Research Bureau, the bureau announced Tuesday.

Central Massachusetts manufacturers should focus on product development as large firms shift operations out of the Bay State, employers and industry experts said Wednesday.

Roberta Schaefer, who helped found the Worcester Regional Research Bureau nearly 30 years ago, and its president and CEO, will retire around the end of the year, the organization announced today.

Worcester's economy could benefit from a nationwide trend of people moving into the downtown areas of smaller cities, a Harvard University economist told the annual meeting of the Worcester Regional Research Bureau on Wednesday.

The economic benefits from a slots parlor in Worcester would be overshadowed by the harm it will cause to the city's quality of life, says a new report from the Worcester Regional Research Bureau (WRRB).

The head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston says economic growth over the next year will continue, although at a less-than-robust pace for the rest of the year.

Setting the tax rates for fiscal year 2012 last night, the Worcester City Council lessened the divide between residential and commercial-industrial rates.

It's not just in geography that the city of Worcester is the center of Central Massachusetts. Almost a third of workers in Worcester County are employed in the city. Major organizations headquartered in Worcester, such as UMass Memorial Health Care and Reliant Medical Group, have satellite offices throughout the region. Stores in the suburbs have customers who drive out from the city, and manufacturers have suppliers there.