Interview by Emily Alhadefe

Before you became mayor, you served on Fife’s planning commission and city council. What attracted you to local government?
It goes back to when we moved into our house in the late 1990s. When we moved in, the land behind the house, which is now Dacca Park, was pumpkins and lettuce. The seller had indicated that it was zoned like green space. At one point I went into city hall just to ask, “What are the plans for that property?” A councilmember, Barry Johnson, was campaigning and came by my house and said, “Hey, there’s a position open on the planning commission.” So I think the funny way to put it is that I got into local government because of the lettuce and the pumpkins just beyond my backyard.

How has technology changed the way local government does business during your tenure, especially since the start of the pandemic and the onset of virtual council meetings?
Virtual meetings are a really nice thing to offer to residents. Some of the folks that show up to comment can do that from home—without having to get in the car and be somewhere at 6 o’clock and then potentially sit through an hour of our meeting to get to the place where they can either provide comments on a specific agenda item or just provide comments in general.

Did any other technology come into play?
Toward the end of 2020, the city launched a new procurement program through [the city’s bank] portal. The program allows employees and supervisors the ability to approve purchases online and in real time. It has reduced the costs and time spent paying for a variety of business-to- business goods and services, particularly during the pandemic. Our website’s interactive voice response capability lets citizens make payments using their mobile devices. And during the Covid-19 closure, the community development department, in tandem with the finance department, implemented an online building permit submission and payment system called SmartGov.

What’s one thing that hasn’t changed?
Our previous city manager and our current interim city manager are still very focused on customer service at the counter. I don’t think that the council ever wants to prohibit or discourage someone from coming to the counter. If we’re making investments

in the technology, we hope people utilize them, but we never want to be in a position where someone can only use the technology.

Do you have any tech- related concerns?
Virtual meetings are tricky. . . .If we keep that as an option moving forward, we may see folks at our meetings that we wouldn’t see normally. The fear for me is that folks will start to log on who aren’t actually residents and who don’t have a vested interest in what’s going on in the city of Fife—who are looking more for a stage to state a purpose.

The fear for me is that folks will start to log on who aren’t actually residents and who don’t have a vested interest in what’s going on in the city of Fife—who are looking more for a stage to state a purpose.

Any basis for that concern?
We had a group take over one of our hotels for the homeless back in December 2020. There was a lot of social media attention to that. It was frightening. When you have that online format available for folks, I do think people abuse it. There’s a website where you can sign a petition for something going on in a city that you don’t even understand. So that’s my biggest fear around this part of technology, where we are opening ourselves up to allowing or welcoming or encouraging discourse from folks that don’t have a vested interest as a business owner or a resident of the city of Fife.

So one challenge seems to be not letting the chatter of social media and the internet, which gives the whole world a voice, drown out the concerns of local residents.
As an elected official, we first answer to our voting public. Our neighboring jurisdictions and the country and the world, they all matter. But this is local politics, nonpartisan elected city council officials. We can’t have this huge scope creep on what we’re responsible for and still get the job done of being responsible to our city.

What’s something important that you’ve learned in your years in local government?
There are those folks that want to be in politics because they have strong beliefs, and they want to represent people that have strong beliefs. Then I think you have people that just are charismatic and have fulfillment in being in a leadership role and pulling folks together to make decisions. I would say that I’m more just about showing up and doing the work. I do think that government is of the people for the people. I didn’t think I’d end up in politics, but now that I’m here, I’m going to do the job with value integrity and transparency.