Welcome to the League Guest Blog!

In keeping with our “Better Communities. Better Michigan.” mission, we’ve adopted another exciting method of promoting our message!  What better way to voice our opinions, concerns, solutions, and ideas about Michigan, and even brag about what makes our communities a great place to live (and a memorable place to visit) than by showcasing a weekly League Guest Blog?  Each Blogger will be showcased Monday through Friday for one week.  

Our first Guest Blogger will be Shea Charles who serves his community as Howell City Manager, a position he has held since June 2004.  Previously, he served as City Manager of Hart, Michigan (2001-2004) and as Management Specialist for the City of Lapeer (1996-2001).  Shea holds a BA of Political Science from the University of Massachusetts and has completed the course work for his Masters in Public Administration from Eastern Michigan University.  He lives in Howell with his wife Barb and son Ethan.

Enjoy!

Shea Charles, City Manager, City of Howell

January 28, 2008

Place matters and what can we do about it?

I write this shortly after the city of Howell’s annual retreat at which the mayor and city council, along with staff, met to set priorities, goals and objectives for the next year.  A major focus of this year’s retreat was the current economic condition in Michigan and how it impacts the city.  It is obvious that the current economic situation in the state, as well as nationally, is not good and will not be for some time.  For the first time in decades, Howell will see a decline in tax revenues due to a reduction in housing values throughout the community.  The state’s unemployment rate continues to be higher than the national average.  So, what can we do as a small city in Michigan?  The answer is work on what you are good at—for Howell, it is our “sense of place.”

Many have written extensively about the changes in world demographics (see Daniel Pink, www.danpink.com) and the convergence of technology, education, and the shift in the US economy.  The old rule of find a job first then relocate no longer applies.  We all know someone who chooses a place to live and then worries about finding a job.  The generation graduating from college now, often referred to as the millennials, are leading this change.  They are looking for a place to be, to interact, to become a part of.  They are looking for a sense of community, a sense of place.  Place is defined, in my opinion, as knowing where you are when you get there. 

An interesting corresponding trend is that the retiring baby boomers are joining the millennials in the search for a sense of place.  Both groups are searching for a place to call home—a place that often includes such things like being able to walk anywhere (walkability), great neighborhoods, traditional downtowns, mass transit, great night life, and exceptional services.

Howell has most of those things. 

Check back tomorrow for Shea's thoughts on the city's role in place...

You may contact Shea Charles, at 517-546-3502 or e-mail scharles@ci.howell.mi.us.

Tuesday

January 29, 2008

The city’s role in place

Place—knowing where you are and feeling like you belong there.  So what can a city do to help define sense of place?  Encouraging the idea of place is much like eating an elephant—you just do it one bite at a time.  A city can impact the sense of place by the services it provides, by its planning and zoning decisions, and through its codes and ordinances.

It can be as simple as the way it designs a street or by the zoning ordinances it adopts—does it promote quality density?  Does it require buildings to be built to the property line in downtown?  Does it encourage property maintenance and renovation?  Does it have programs to engage residents and businesses, i.e. a Main Street Program? 

A street design can impact sense of place, as in this street in Howell.  This was East Clinton Street, which was about 40 feet wide.

This is the recently rebuilt East Clinton Street, which is only 20 feet wide.

By making the street narrower, traffic is slowed and we are able to provide better walkability.  This is an example of how a city can affect place.

Another way of promoting a sense of place is the services that a city offers.  Howell is a full-service community, we provide streets, police, fire (through an authority), building inspections, planning, zoning, parks and recreation.  All impact the idea of place.   

Check back tomorrow for Shea’s thoughts on how we get there…

You may contact Shea Charles, at 517-546-3502 or e-mail scharles@ci.howell.mi.us.

Wednesday

January 30, 2008

How do we get there?

I recently asked Dan Gilmartin, MML Executive Director, to give a presentation to the entire city staff.  He started with this video that really drives home why place is important in the changing world.  The message to the team is simply this: why should people choose to live in Howell?  A key part of the answer is our employees.  Every time we help a resident, every time we provide a quality service, we answer the question:  “why Howell?” The reaction from staff has been great.  Over the past few weeks, many departments have embraced the idea and have run with it.  The first step was to integrate a sense of place into the annual budgetary process. 

How to integrate place in the budget

So how do we know we are doing it?  The city has worked over the past few years to reformat its annual budget into a document that the public can easily understand.  My personal goal is that anybody can pick up our budget, read it, and tell me within 30 minutes what the city is doing that year.

How do we start to link sense of place with our budget?  Why would we?  For us that linking can be done through performance management (PM).  PM is a process of linking your long-term visions with specific goals, objectives, and actions steps.  The purpose of PM is to provide a method to see if what we are doing as a city is having the desired effect of promoting a sense of place.  

The linking of PM to place starts with the mayor and city council defining what is “place.”  The next step is to determine the key indicators that help the city allocate resources to meet these goals.  For instance, if strong neighborhoods help define your sense of place, then what indicators let you know your neighborhoods are strong?  Measuring will include surveying the community to see what they think and to find out if they like what we are doing.  The survey information, combined with the key indicators and other qualitative data, i.e. an indicator of a strong neighborhood might be the percentage of rental homes to single family homes, are ways to see if we are accomplishing the idea of working on place.

City services play a critical role in place.  As I discussed yesterday, they make a difference.  Knowing that the police will respond in 2-3 minutes versus 50-60 minutes makes a difference for our residents in choosing us over surrounding townships.  Using PM with benchmarks can be an effective tool by letting us know if we are providing our services efficiently and effectively.  But equally important is communicating with our residents on what we are doing.

Check back tomorrow for Shea’s thoughts on letting the public know…

You may contact Shea Charles, at 517-546-3502 or e-mail scharles@ci.howell.mi.us.

Thursday

January 31, 2008

Letting the public know

Over the past twelve months I have been rethinking how we operate as a city and how we interact with our citizens.  Listening to residents and business owners, I have come back to the realization that most people only care about their local government when it does not work.  Not a complaint, but just a statement of fact. 

Howell is a full-service community that provides police, fire, recreation and public work services—we pick up your leaves in the fall, and respond to your call for police in 2-3 minutes and do a great job.  Our team of city employees is amazing, when trouble hits, the gang is there fixing it.  Do we make everyone happy?  No, but we do really well.

Getting back to the retreat, the economy sucks in Michigan, revenues are down, Howell is in a county in which 80% of the population lives in townships that provide little or no services (we are the poster child for urban sprawl).  Okay, so why should people live in Howell?  Why should they pay 20% more in taxes than their township neighbor across the street?  The more I think about it, the more I realize the question isn’t “why should I?”  The question is “why wouldn’t I choose to live in the city?”  As a city, we need to make sure that the answer to that question is evident to everyone that lives, works, or visits the city of Howell.  Every action the city takes and every policy it adopts should support that answer.  The reasons to live in the city are actually pieces to the puzzle of the city’s economic future and maybe the state of Michigan’s.

Check back tomorrow for Shea’s thoughts on lessons learned so far…

You may contact Shea Charles, at 517-546-3502 or e-mail scharles@ci.howell.mi.us.

Friday

February 1, 2008

Lessons learned so far

We are just starting to formalize the idea of place and incorporating it into everything we do as a city.  I have realized that getting staff, council and, most importantly, the public involved is going to be critical.  The good news is that in the current economic crunch, we are under the microscope more now than ever before.  This is a rare opportunity to engage everyone in the process of defining place and implementing it.

Many communities have successfully engaged their residents in discussing a community’s finances (a great example is Huntington Woods).  Being able to engage and involve residents in more than just finances and on an on-going basis will be the challenge.  But the community, as does the state, has a choice. We can either sit back, continue to hunker down and do nothing, or we can step up, do something, and make a difference.  The “do something” is setting a vision of what we want to be.  For Howell, we want to build on what we do well.  We want to build on our belief that we are a great place to live and work.  The more we work on “place” the better the community will be and ultimately, the better the state will be. 

You may contact Shea Charles, at 517-546-3502 or e-mail scharles@ci.howell.mi.us.

Check back Monday to hear from Joe VanderMeulen, CEO for the Land Information Access Association…