If you're considering python and ruby then you might want to consider crystal (and the python equivalent that I don't remember the name of) and avoid the runtime costs of a VM. Can you give some examples of the kind of utilities you're talking about? Is it something you'd load up and have running all day or a command you'd run frequently? VM overhead wouldn't matter in the former, but would in the latter. What are the performance needs of the utilities?

Manual memory management isn't really a problem for small, simple utilities, it becomes a problem on larger scale systems. C is a rather simple language to learn.