An Interview with City Manager Richard Lewis

In an interview with City Manager Richard Lewis at Espresso Bay, Cristin Popelier asks some tough questions about sense of place.

To fully inform planning decisions and assure the long-term viability of our communities, public officials and citizens need to understand and preserve the unique local character that gives each of us our sense of place.  Your Place On-line Magazine seeks to increase our understanding of the values that we place on cultural and natural landscapes by engaging public officials in a dialogue about our region.  In this interview with Traverse City Manager, Richard Lewis, Cristin Popelier discusses over coffee at Espresso Bay:

 

1.)    The City Manager's role in maintaining

        our collective sense of place in the Grand Traverse Region? 

2.)    His obligation to create and protect a sense of place for the region?

3.)    His opinion of the role that an individual's sense of place has in planning

        and developing human communities?

4.)    A great place that he recommends visiting in the GT Region?

 

Click on the icon below to listen to the interview with Richard Lewis. 

 

Here is a short summary of his responses for those of you unable to stream the audio file.

 

1.)    I believe my role is to work with the community, with the collective governing bodies, and the public to implement what the pubic desires and to utilize the tools available to us to construct, maintain, advance our infrastructure to meet our collective goal.  The hardest part is to gage what our collective sense of place is.  We are a desired place to be; in a certain sense of the way we have become our own worst enemy because when the growth gets here we struggle with it.  My role therefore, as an administrator is to integrate the many opportunities that people identify.  One example is the park properties that the recreation authority has purchased.

 

2.)    I have an obligation to the community, which is larger than the city, to leave it better than I found it, give consideration to the many project proposals, and to meld the many objectives together in an effort to get us to where we collectivley want to be.

 

3.)    I think that what is driving our collective sense of place is the individual who is coming out to the meetings.  We in government can get trapped in our own little worlds and get drawn into the dialogue of the few.  Often we in City government don't hear enough.  I would encourage people to get engaged.  It is only through engagement that we will come to some consensus.  On the other hand, you have to be careful on how you engage people.  Our community has to overcome these issues and continue to work to through the differences. In the end it is only the individual who can make it happen. 

 

4.) I take my two labs and go out for walks along the Boardman River Trail starting at Sabin Dam heading towards the YMCA, I also go out to Hickory Meadows and roam around downtown, but it really depends on what I want to do.

 

What do you think?