Owlnotes.com

I'm the Mayor of the City of Champaign. Along with that, you're automatically the Liquor Commissioner of the city.

Well here in Champaign, we have the mayor and eight city council members. Probably the biggest thing is keeping them organized and informed of what's going on. We set the policy for the city, so working with the council is very important. I always like to describe the mayor's role as the problem solver of the city. We get the problems and it's up to myself as the mayor and the council to organize them. So it's problem solving and meeting and talking to people.

You have to be flexible. I think the biggest responsibility of the job is problem solving. I get anything up here from developers to the chancellor or the president of the University of Illinois, so you have to be flexible to work with all kinds of people. A lot of it is listening. Some of them just want to come to my office and express themselves. I was also a police officer for 32 years, and I spent 25 of those years as a detective. So I was always engaged in problem solving and working with different situations, and often you work individually, using your own expertise.

Generally, you just have to listen to them, and when it comes down to policy making, you have to do basically what you think is going to be in the best interest of the city. Then you have to educate the public as to why you think it's the best policy for the city. At this week's council meeting, we're going to be facing something unexpected, which is a $1.7 million renovation of the City Building. The building is 70 years old, and there are some brickwork problems, so the work has to be done. So you have to educate as to why this building is worth saving, and why it's worth putting that amount of money in now. So it's a lot of communication.

A wide variety, being that we're a twin city with the City of Urbana, and we have the county and the University of Illinois. I meet on a regular basis with the city manager of our city and with the president and the chancellor of the university. We have regular meetings with the Park District and different segments that we work with, so that we're all on the same page with where we're going, and we're all trying to accomplish the same goals. We also have to let them know how the city plays an important role with their agency.

Yes, the university is a major part of our community. If it wasn't for the school, we would probably just be another small, rural town. It's very important to work jointly so we can help each other and share costs on certain projects, especially now that we're improving the university's research area, down in the southern part of the city. It's very important that the university and the city work hand in hand. Right now, we're putting in a very important interchange off of Interstate 57 to be a direct link off the highway into the university's research area.

Well I am retired, and I ran for this office by choice. I'm now going into my third term, so if I didn't like it, I would have gotten out. For me, it's just an extension of what I did for the better part of my life, which was meeting people, communicating and solving problems. Personally, I find it very enjoyable.

I was interested in politics when I was on the police department. I knew there were two things I wanted to do: I either wanted to run for sheriff of the county, or for mayor of the City of Champaign. The first opportunity that came up was for sheriff. I think there were five of us in the primary as Republicans that year, and one of them was the current chief deputy at the sheriff's department, so he had the edge. But I gained a lot from running for that. I was a little upset when I lost, but a leading politician at the time gave me some advice. He said I could either be mad because I lost, and put my tail between my legs and go home, or I could go back and pay my dues. The candidate that won had 20 or 25 years experience in politics and had helped other candidates, and in effect, paid his dues. So I elected to come back and try again. Knowing that I was eventually going to run for mayor, I had to gain some experience. There was an opening in my district for councilman, so I ran to be the representative for the southwest part of Champaign, and I won that.

What discouraged me was what some people did during the primary. I was putting signs up in small communities, and some of the top leaders were tearing my signs down and threatening people and putting their signs up. So I thought that was a little dirty. I figured if you have five people running, you should let the cream rise to the top and let everyone debate fairly. I didn't feel it was exactly fair, so that discouraged me. But again, I understood the point about my opponent paying his dues. It was a learning experience.

I spent six years on the council as a representative for southwest Champaign. It was a great experience, because I learned how the city and the council operated. It gave me a great political base in Champaign, because I was very active in the southwest part of town. I got to know even more people than I had known before. It's just that if you're going to run for a city position, you have to go out and do the door-to-door and manual stuff yourself. It's not like the national elections where you have to big advertising committees or people helping you. It's up to you to get out and meet the people. I laid the base in southwest Champaign for the six years I was on the council.

That you're not going to keep everybody happy. Just do the best you can. I don't think people really expect to come into my office now and have me solve all their problems; they just want someone to listen to them. One of my strong points at the police department was as an interrogator, where you ask the right questions to get the other person to do the talking. That's kind of the same thing you have to do here. The people just want you to listen, and they walk away a little happier.

In Champaign, no. We run as a city manager form of government, so the city manager is the one who has all the degrees and gets the high pay. Once we as the council set policy, he actually has the responsibility of carrying it out. I do have a two-year degree from the junior college here, but that's as far as I went.

In the City of Champaign, mayor is considered a part-time position, and I'm required to spend 20 hours per week. But I probably spend about 30 to 40 hours working as mayor every week. Being that the job is part-time, it benefits me being retired because now I have time to spend on this type of job. If I had another full-time job, it would be very difficult to do some of the things that I do.

Well, get my coffee of course. But usually, the secretary has stuff piled up for me, paperwork that needs to be signed and a packet with all the mails and e-mails that come into the office. And then there's a packet with all the people that have called and want to talk to me personally. So the first thing I do is go through all of that stuff.

A lot of reading and paper-signing. Every morning when I come in here, I go through the paperwork and the e-mails, so that's a primary thing at that point. Every Tuesday, we have a city council meeting, so I have to study the issues and what's coming up. If I have to, I'll get together with the council and discuss them before the meeting. Organizing for each Tuesday's meeting is important.

Just different kinds of paperwork that comes into my office. For example, we had a special census recently, and we're going to redistrict the council areas in Champaign. So right now, we're working on a redistricting map, which could be rather complicated. There's also a lot of mail that comes into the office of the mayor from constituents and businesses it's that type of reading.

No, it's pretty much a daily thing. Each day, I come in and tackle the problems of that day. Plus, I plan in advance for the weekly meetings on the Tuesdays.

A bunch. I have an open door policy at my office, so anybody who comes up and wants to see me is welcome to. I get everything from the businessman down to the street person. Sometimes it drives the secretaries crazy with the variety of people that come in here. But I think it's important to the people who live here that I have an open door policy. Some people come up here and are surprised when they actually get in here to talk to me.

They just increased it last year. I make $35,000 per year, plus my car mileage is paid for. It was $25,000 last year. That salary is set by ordinance.

Outside of the city, not a whole lot. I haven't made a habit of going to a lot of these meetings with the other mayors or things like that. It seems like the mayor's council is holding a lot of meetings all the time in Chicago, but I don't go to a lot of them. I went to some in the beginning and didn't find them beneficial.

Well my children are grown, so it's just my wife and me. It hasn't affected us much. Like I said, we go to a lot of the social things. My wife attends a lot of the social functions, and she enjoys that part of it. Of course being in retirement, I don't want to sit around and do nothing, so it's been good for me.

It doesn't bother me if they come up and talk to me, but the most frustrating part is that some people have a negative attitude all the time. I have one guy who constantly came up here, and every time he came up here he was complaining about something the guy never saw anything positive in his life. When he came up the last time, I stopped him and told him not to come back until he had at least one positive thing to say. He hasn't been back since.

The thing you don't want to do is take things too seriously. When I was first on as a councilman, I saw one of the largest crowds we had at a meeting. They were ready to burn our houses down, simply because the cable company was going to put the black box on top of their televisions. People were just irate that they had to put this box on their television. Now if you look at all the stuff we have attached to our TVs, it shows that these problems aren't really problems six months later. You have to be quick on your feet to realize what's really important as opposed to what's a temporary fix.

I had to work constantly with the press when I was a detective. I appreciated the job they have to do, and they had to appreciate the job I had to do. We worked very well together. The same thing goes for the press now. I try to keep a very good relationship with them. If they call me and they want to do an interview, I'm generally willing to meet with them to do an interview. Sometimes I'll even agree to come meet them in their studio, because I'm out around town all the time.

I was just reelected last May, so I have three years left on this term. The previous mayor and I are the only mayors who have served three terms, so everyone asks me if I'm going to run again. I tell them at my stage, it all depends on how healthy I am and whether I still have the energy to keep it up. If I'm still healthy, I'll probably go another term.

I love working on problems, and I love meeting with a variety of people. Being mayor has given me an opportunity to do that. I knew a lot of people in the community before, but this has just expanded my knowledge and ability to work with people.

I guess what I find the hardest to deal with is the people on the blogs, and that's why I don't read them a lot. They try to take apart your work and criticize what you do. They never attend the meetings, and it's always the same people complaining. I'd like to go on the blogs and read some positive and constructive ideas that I could take away and help me on the job. But whenever I read them, I never find anything that's useful. When I ran for office, my son told me three months before the election not to read the paper or the Internet.

On the council, we have a wide variety of opinions we're a very diverse group. We rarely get a unanimous vote on something that's not a routine issue. When I went to one seminar, everyone was talking about how bad their relationship was between the mayor and the council. I was just thinking, "I'm going back to Champaign and hugging my council." We can differ on issues, but it's never personal. When it's done, we get back together and work on the next problem. Nothing gets carried over. We also try to meet socially on a regular basis.

Nothing. I've only gained. I've gained a wide variety in getting to know new people and new things.

I think it just changes with the individual. The job responsibilities are essentially the same; it just changes with the person who's sitting in the office. Before the previous mayor, the mayor would only be in the office for about six hours per week. That really changed with the previous mayor and myself, the time credited to actually being here and being involved in the community has increased tremendously. But the job responsibilities are the same.

Maybe in the bigger cities or when you're running for election or something. But in the average community, I don't think anything changes because there isn't much beneficial on them.

How to work with higher people in the community. Before becoming mayor, I really hadn't had any experience working with those people. I'm dealing with the president of the university and developers, and I need to be communicating on a level with them where I'm not intimidated. After a while, I got used to the fact that these guys put their pants on the same way that I do.

Well if you're talking about someone who would run against me for the job, I can't think of any. But again, you have to be working to spend the time doing the job. I was always critical of the guys who would just spend a couple hours a week in the office. This is a very important person-to-person type of job. And you need to be able to go to all kinds of meetings about all kinds of different subjects, so you have to be flexible and willing to learn new things.

I would, but I could probably give you some names of people that wouldn't. Generally, I've gotten a good response from people, and it's really all about going out and meeting people on a regular basis. I was at a coffee shop once, and I was talking with this one boy who was about 17 years old. He was asking me all these political questions, and I probably talked to him for about half an hour. When we were done, he said that he had lived in a lot of communities, and there was no way that he would have been able to go up and have a cup of coffee with the mayor and talk about some serious stuff. He really appreciated our conversation.

Outside of my parents always raising me to be honest, I can go back to my first attempt in politics when I ran for sheriff. One politician told me you can either cut tail and run, or you can get involved. That's what I encourage when I talk to young kids. Even if it's just stuffing envelopes, get involved to see how an election is run and what you have to do. Be involved in something.