Days of Labor
“I’m sorry, Mayor”, Library Director Lawanda Roudebush said, taking advantage of the open door policy. Mayor Gluba and I were in my office. We were on the cusp of a miracle solution that would rid Davenport of potholes forever, reduce property taxes and create nine new acres of riverfront park. But that would have to wait.
Lawanda had a guest with her, who she said just had to meet me. The gentleman, leading the recruitment for Lawanda’s successor, lived in Vernon Hills, Illinois. I don’t recall his name, but Lawanda said he was adamant about saying hello. Which he did, rather effusively. The man lived in Vernon Hills’ Centennial Crossing neighborhood and said he had to meet the person who planned his community. That would be me.
Incorporated in 1958, Vernon Hills lacked the charming historic districts that anchored the lovely towns near us. So we set out to create some history, because Vernon Hills was the kind of town that didn’t let inertia chart its course. It’s a much longer story fully told, but suffice to say neither the state’s largest homebuilder at the time nor residents in the adjacent subdivision with the largest lots in the community at the time started out in support of the idea to build the first large-scale traditional neighborhood in the Chicago region. So I rolled up my sleeves, turned the citizen engagement knob up to eleven, and spent months building trust and commitment to a project that was as high in quality as it was innovative.
It all worked out great, as the headhunter enthusiastically told Mayor Gluba. The neighborhood has aged well, the first home-buyers made small fortunes when they sold their homes and the residents in the adjacent subdivision use the many parks in Centennial Crossing often. The development company had a line of home-buyers on opening day and went on to build their business by selling homes that looked like those in Vernon Hills all across the Chicago metro region. At some point, lost in the rapture of describing this wonderland of a walkable neighborhood with excellent architecture and a community-building public realm, the man told Mayor Gluba I was “beloved and revered” in Vernon Hills. In case the Mayor was still lost in thought on the pothole cure, I asked him to repeat the phrase, which he happily did. There was some good-hearted laughter, as I recall.
Beloved and revered. After I told the Library headhunter story at dinner that day, the phrase would become a running joke at home. There would be a tough day or an unkind word in the media and when asked how I was faring, I’d smile, give a thumbs-up and say “beloved and revered!” Love and reverence are seedlings. They need some time to grow and flourish.
The flourished intrusion into the Davenport workday some years ago came back to me while skimming through reference reports prepared by Colin Baenziger’s firm for Estero, Florida. Estero is Florida’s newest city, a thirty square mile town of about 30,000 that shares my birthday; December 31. But I have a fifty-two year head start, because Estero was born on the most recent New Years Eve. They’ve elected officials and are now looking for their first Village Manager. The first manager. For a brand-new town. That could be an interesting assignment, so I’ll be heading down for a chat.
Larry Laschen was my boss and mentor at Vernon Hills and I’ve always been thankful he turned me loose on the Centennial Crossing project. In the headhunter report for Estero, Larry references my work on the assignment and has other nice things to say, as do the other dozen references they picked from a list of a hundred. We city managers lead lives on the record, so you can sort through it all, together with the other five candidates, (here) if you are so inclined. If you’d like to skip 657 pages to just read my reference report, those twenty pages are (here). If twenty pages are too much - and it is hard to imagine they're not - an unofficial one-page word cloud summary is (here).
As we honor work this Labor Day weekend, I remember from physics class that work is defined as force times distance. That’s an agreeable summation, as applicable in concept to moving a community from Point A to Point Z as it to conducting experiments with weights and pulleys. How much work to do? Simple. Figure out how much distance you need to cover, and apply the necessary force.
Of course, it gets more complicated outside the Physics 101 lab. There are people involved. They have different ideas about where Point A and Point Z are, varying opinions regarding the correct routes to Points B - Z, and well-defined thoughts about the application of force by government. If you’re hoping to move a community forward, the best approach is to involve the citizens, and let them be the force for progress. Vernon Hills' Centennial Crossing. Grayslake's Prarie Crossing Charter School. Davenport's RiverVision Plan. Community Building 101 is opening processes to citizens. Community building is an art as much as it is a science, and the art is grounded in inclusion, transparency and trust.
When you spend your days of public service promoting inclusion, transparency and trust, you’ll rarely have reason to be sorry.
