Paul Szmal: And welcome back to FLX Morning. It is 749 and I'm happy to be welcoming a new guest into the studio with us this morning and that's Geneva City Manager Amy Hendricks. Amy, good morning. How are you this morning?
Amie Hendrix: Good morning. I'm doing well. How are you?
Paul Szmal: Doing great. Doing great. I guess by way of introduction to people, we should probably start by explaining exactly what the job of the City Manager is.
Amie Hendrix: Right. So the job of the City Manager, I am an appointee of the City Council and I carry out the day-to-day operations of the city. So the Council is a legislative body. They set the policy and the direction for the city and then I manage all of the operations of the city and provide oversight to the staff, develop the budget that then Council takes and makes their own, and work with the Council to fulfill the vision and mission of the city.
Paul Szmal: I'm tempted to ask what you do in your spare time, but I get the feeling you don't exactly have a lot.
Amie Hendrix: No, there's not a lot of spare time and City Managers typically live in that city that they serve, so all of that spare time is actually taken up by doing things within the community that you're providing service to.
Paul Szmal: What are some of the current projects that you're working on right now?
Amie Hendrix: Yeah, so in the city there's a lot going on. The Council set six goals for this year and they are a wide variety of things. Things like economic development, maintaining operations, making sure that we're doing efficient fiscal operations, and there's a variety of different ways we're doing that. Some of the big projects that we've been working in the economic development front, Ontario County has looked at housing a lot, and so there's some pretty large housing projects that have come to fruition. We sell city property, so the city has some property that they've taken over the years, and so there's been a city sales process of that property, and the next process is coming up, so the deadline for people to make offers on property that the city owns is actually this Friday, and then we'll review that in the second quarter, bring those proposals forward to Council.
Other things going on, improving communications, making sure that we're hearing from residents. So last month we started community conversations with the city manager, and each month I will be someplace in the city, some of the locations will change, with a different department head. So last month we met with Fire Chief Parada, and he and I talked about the fire department, operations there, and really fire services in general. This month we'll be meeting on April 18th from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. with Recreation Director David Sharman to talk about recreation services and our parks and playgrounds and what's going on there, as well as kind of an open forum for anyone to ask the city manager questions. So lots of different opportunities for the community to connect, which is something we've been focusing on more and more.
Paul Szmal: Okay, so these are open to the public sessions that are happening?
Amie Hendrix: Yes, wide open, kind of a come drop by at any time, so they're about two hour sessions. People can drop in, they can ask questions, and then what we're doing after is creating an FAQ from that session, so what questions were asked, and then we'll put it all on our website, push it out on social media, so if you came in for part of the session or you couldn't make the session and you want to know more about fire services, you can actually go online right now and you can look up the March Community Conversations with Geneva and see what the Chief and I talked about.
Paul Szmal: I'm glad you mentioned housing. We had a Geneva Economic Development Director, David Westin, a couple of weeks ago, and he was talking about some of the projects that are in the pipeline right now, and that housing in Geneva especially is kind of an issue right now.
Amie Hendrix: It is. So, when you think of economic development, you think about making a community where people want to live, work, play, invest, and the big piece though is live, and so when we have businesses that approach us, they talk about what's the workforce look like here. Our workforce typically falls into the education sector, some medical sector from the hospital, and then tourism sector, and all of those businesses struggle to find quality employees, and as we look at the local unemployment rates, those kinds of things, we want to look at how do they get employees, and one piece of that is making sure they have housing, and Ontario County did a housing study last year, and what they found is the answer to housing is yes, we need it, and we need all of it, and it's not any piece of the county, including the city of Geneva.
I think one of the things that the city of Geneva offers is a walkable community, so we talk about an increase in downtown businesses. One of the main things that a business looks at when they're building their business is what's the customer flow, and that's something that continually comes up, especially when we talk about things like food security, and grocery stores, and how do we have more of those brands. Well, when a grocery store looks to come to Geneva, be it a small retail or a large one, they're looking at what the demand would be, and so everything comes back to how do we make this population center, and how do we do it thoughtfully to build that community.
Paul Szmal: Wow, there's a lot that goes into that, a lot more than you would think.
Amie Hendrix: Absolutely. I wish I could wave a wand and say I want this kind of business and this kind of thing to happen, but there's so much behind the scenes, and one of the struggles that I think in public service is everyone has choice, so you have choice of what kind of housing you want to live in. While some people really want to live in that first-time starter home, others are looking for an apartment, or a one-bedroom, or two-bedroom unit, or three-bedroom unit, but everyone has a choice on what they want to do. Same with businesses. They choose where they want to make their business, and they have to look at the profit and loss and what that looks like.
I think what's really exciting is we're seeing more and more people wanting to invest in Geneva. Now, it's finding the right spaces and places to fit those people.
Paul Szmal: That is where you kind of run as a point person for the whole process.
Amie Hendrix: Yes, yes. So, I have a great staff, many different department heads that do all of the different pieces from public safety to economic development to roads, highways, sewer, all of that, and my job really is to work with all of them to ensure that we're creating a community that people want to be in.
Paul Szmal: And I'm sure one of the things when it comes to roads that draws attention this time of year is pothole repair.
Amie Hendrix: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Repairs are a big thing this time of year, and the potholes as well as fixing what's underneath the roads. One of the things that we often talk about is with local government services, people don't know when things are going really well. You only know when we're having challenges.
Paul Szmal: Right.
Amie Hendrix: So, you know, if water starts flowing in the street, someone's going to call because there's something wrong. But a majority of the time, our water system's working really well, and you don't even know it's there. Same with sewer and all the other services. Similar with roads. We have some great roads, and then this time of year, between thaw and freeze and all the other things, you start to see some of those potholes, and I know our crews have been working on those types of things. Buildings and grounds has already been out in our parks and are maintaining all of the park equipment, so there's a lot that goes in behind the scenes.
Paul Szmal: I know the housing is kind of a mission-critical thing right now. Other than that, what's high up on the priority list that you're dealing with at the moment?
Amie Hendrix: Oh, so there's a lot of mission-critical. If I were to look at each department, each one has something that they're focusing on. Last night at the council meeting, we talked about a wide variety of topics. One of the things that we will be bringing forward is a resource recovery park in the city, so people will have a place to bring their trash, as well as recycling, metal scraps, things like that. That hasn't happened before. A lot of our residents contract with someone to take all of that out, so that's been something we're working on, and we're hoping to launch that this month, as Earth Day is this month and Mission Zero is coming up, which is an event at the Recreation Center. So we're hoping to launch that.
Another great topic that came up is panhandling and how do we discuss panhandling, and I think there will be more work on that with our police department and our council members looking at our ordinances.
Paul Szmal: All right. Well, it's been a fun first visit, Amy. Thank you very much for stopping in and filling us in this morning. We certainly appreciate it.
Amie Hendrix: Thank you.
Paul Szmal: All right. It is 7.58 on FLX Morning.
