Interview with New City Manager of Santa Maria David Rowlands, Full Transcript

You've been city manager in Fillmore, California and also in Clayton, Ohio. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience and what led you to this position here in Santa Maria? 

Yeah, so I started my first city manager position in Clayton, Ohio, early 2000s; I was the very first city manager there. I took over that city there for close to 11 years. We had a lot of economic development there. We brought in Caterpillar Logistics Center; recruited them. I had to work with the state and federal government and also local government for tax incentives to bring them out to Ohio, and worked closely with our police department, fire department out there. There was a lot of new home building in the area we did. And then, after being there for 11 years, the opportunity came to come back to California. I felt more open to it, and I applied for a different job, and the recruiter recommended me to a friend they knew who knew me. And I talked with that person several times, and they finally convinced me to go for it, even though the situation was dire, I went for it and applied. Then I got the job, and when I got there, their savings was up there, $150,000 now we're at $10 million in reserves, able to retool the city itself from an employee standpoint, recruited a number of new businesses there, the biggest one being Rotorcraft, a helicopter repair company did Large Single Family Development Clover out there, and probably one of the best affordable housing projects in the state of California. If you drive by the edge, you will never know it's an affordable housing project. We're close with the fire department, police department, and then the opportunity came here for Santa Maria. And I was not looking for the job at all, but I was reached out to to apply for it. I applied for the position, came up here a few times with my wife, looked around the community, talked to a couple of friends who were here, a former friend, a friend who grew up here and got to know the city, met a few people, and really looked at the opportunities that are here. A lot of people are talking about challenges flipping the script, and say it's an opportunity, an opportunity to address the budget, opportunity to work on the downtown area, an opportunity to expand to the west for annexation, an opportunity to build the regional Sports Park. So to me, it looks just a great opportunity all the way around. It's a beautiful community.

What are some of your immediate priorities?

Of course, get the expectations; I want to seek out department heads and their departments. Then start taking a look at the budget. You evaluate the overall organization, department by department. How are we staffed? How's the funding coming in? Are we using the positions effectively and efficiently? Reach out to local leaders to meet with them, one on one. Sit down with city council members, find out what their priorities are, how they like to receive information, set up meetings with them, so we keep each other really informed how we're moving forward, and then kind of listen, really, listen to the community, listen to the leaders. I don’t want to come in, you know, with my own ideas and just bulldoze people. We need to listen, work together around the team, and then we can achieve great things here. 

How do you plan to engage the community and ensure that residents' voices are heard in decision making? 

I think that's a tricky topic. Everybody says, “Yes, involve the community.” Where I'm more concerned is when you have an involved community, and you really want to listen to them. We can't go out to them, but the answer is already in our hands. We need to go out there. And for example, if it's a situation on the budget, we can't meet with them and say, “Hey, we have a deficit… No, by the way, here's how we're going to solve it. How do you feel about this?” versus going to this thing, saying “We have a $20 million deficit… What's your suggestion that gives the opportunity to be creative and look at things?” versus, well, if say it already has this figured out? Do they really want to listen to me or not? For example, you also need to go out there and talk to them at their place, whether it's a house, a business, or a school. And then for me, what I would like to do is do some coffees at different locations around the community, and bring myself maybe department head or counselor, if they can make it, just say hey, you know St. Mary's is gonna be here for an hour. Have coffee with them, talk, talk with them. Obviously, very open. People will come meet with me. They will come talk if they have the time. Obviously, I think it's really important to explain why we're doing things, how we're doing it, and answer the questions. And I think that's the most important part: Figuring out what the community really wants. That's all the community really wants is that yet they're listening, they're truly being heard. You know, versus checking a box, I think that's where people connect. Why? There's enough participation, well, is there enough community outreach? Well, the community is not coming because they know the decision has already been made, and that's why I think it's important, if we're going to do it, we need to be willing to listen to the good and the bad. And that's the whole key idea. Very community oriented, like that. 

What do you say are the biggest challenges currently facing Santa Maria?

I think the first number one opportunity is to look at the budget and fixing the deficit. I think that's gonna be a great opportunity to go out there right size, and come back to the city council, tell them in the public, hey, here's what we're doing, or fix our structural deficit, we're able to move forward, then I think number two is really taking the overall city of the public director and making us a very cohesive team, and all working together, all pulling the same direction, all working with our employees, you know, to keep keep them happy, being flexible with more schedules, and take a look at what we can do as a city to make us the desired place for people to come work. What does that entail? Let's look at the private sector. Let's look at other communities, other cities. What benefits do we offer that we're not offering, or which talk to our employees? What benefit would you like to see that we're not offering that will help us recruit, maintain people to be here? I think those are two quick ones, real off the top, and then obviously, work with the fire department and get the union situation taken care of.

How do you plan to support economic development in the area?

I know right now the city is looking at development and the survey going out, and I understand we'll be working closely with the Chamber. I think it's going to be important that the city we put together an internal economic development team from I like to do it from all departments, and that includes police, fire, just get initial viewpoints on a building being built, if you have bushes in a spot that someone could be hiding out that makes a dangerous situation. Or do you put the fire height in case of fire sprinklers? Here's why we need it. Get that all up front rather later in the process, and then for us to really put together an economic development strategy between the chamber and the city itself, and we'll be able to carry out the city council's leadership and identify key industrial areas that we want to go after. We have Vandenberg out there. What do they need in the future? So let's try to get maybe some aerospace business out here, pharmaceutical bases that come out here with and then try to then put together the infrastructure to recruit those, go to those companies, go to those kinds of conferences, and recruit those businesses to come here. There's gonna have to be a team effort between the city and the Chamber, the way it's currently structured. 

What role can you see for technology in modernizing Santa Maria?

Technology is gonna be the key for everything moving forward. Right now, before you had your laptop, you're walking around the rest of the now you're down to a cell phone to take all your needs. One of the things I want to talk about internally with our transportation system is if there’s a way that we can make it more like being in Japan or Europe, where the bus says it’s supposed to be there at 3:21 and so you know for sure it’s there at 3:21. We can use our technology in the future on the buses. So if I'm waiting for a bus, it says 8:20, I'll have an app on my phone that says the bus will be a bit late at 8:25 so when you go do something or come back, you know it’s there at 8:25. The buses there use technology which we’re also starting to do right now with our Smart City, Safe City program. Does the public see something? Hey, there's weeds and graffiti over here. Fill out the form, send it in. We can take care of the problem. A lot of the things that the public thinks we see we don't see. And I think it's why the public are really our eyes and ears out there to help us continue to grow. Where technology will come in eventually, take your pictures, send it to us. We'll be paperless in probably 10 years. Videotapes, doing videos about city services, what we can do here for a resident, how to videos, why Santa Maria? Why would you want to locate here? Why do you have a business here? Like to bring in? Going back to the last question, economic development. They'll bring in some of the key economic development leaders in this town, and put them and put them on part of a video, a discussion. Here's why you should move your industry to Santa Maria. This is a gateway, you know, to the winery region. Gateway to SLO County. We have everything you need right here, affordable housing, good people, community college to get those leaders to speak about us. That's not just the city, it's not just the Chamber. It's real people. We're talking about why they chose to come here.

Santa Maria has a very diverse population. So how do you plan to promote inclusivity and cultural engagement?

Santa Maria is very similar to Fillmore, or about 77% Hispanic, and everything we do print wise must be both English and Spanish. Make sure it's available to them in both languages. I think you invite people in you just to me, just about treating people kind, there's no reason to be upset with anybody you know, need to slow down. You slow down. My in-laws are French, and they speak English, but we go there, I butcher French, and they come out here, they're speaking English. I speak much slower than I am right now in French, talking with them, but they speak great English, so I understand issues there, and even when you're traveling overseas, most of the places do have an English menu. Those are things that you can do here from a city standpoint, to make sure that we are addressing those community members that we see when the population shifts.

What are some of your long term goals for the city? 

One thing that's gonna be very key: the community is getting the downtown plan started and kicked off that can set the stage for future residents, especially then even the college that they built. We bring in the right types of businesses, and especially little boutique businesses. High quality restaurants, quality restaurants, where people say they've eaten here before. Let's go there. But people will travel for food. They'll travel for an experience. We can get that taken care of. And then the big push is going to the annexation to the east of the community out there. And once that takes place, we actually have a great opportunity, in my opinion, to develop a new city, to develop something that is unique. And at that point in time, we shouldn't just be focusing on what we did in Santa Maria in the past? What do we do in California? Let's broaden our horizons. Looking at Europe, everybody talks about Europe and how it looks and how it's sustainable. What can we do on that side of the community? You know, do you look at what they've done in Copenhagen? So for some developments, it's a no car zone, but they have cars. You can use better electric vehicles, and rent them out and check them out, and you move on, but you also have transportation to take you to the work center. Are those things we can do here and really think new and creative and make it something unique that will have people want to live there, and not the same old cookie cutter community. They have an opportunity to do something completely different. It's the only time we get a chance to do it. 

How do you plan to address affordable housing? 

So affordable housing, it's– it's an interesting discussion, but when you hear people talk about affordable housing, they're talking about, usually farm workers and low income housing and very low income we need that. And so you build that. And for me, that needs to be built at a very, very high quality level. The individuals who are moving in there don't have a lot, so this building should be nicer than any affordable or any for profit apartment complex, in my opinion. In addition to that, we need to find the next level up, the intermediate housing. That's what we're missing in Fillmore right now; we have the low, at low and very low, that next level, they get a pay raise. They need to move. They're moving out of our jurisdiction, so you have to make sure you have all levels of affordable housing. It's also very key in how you bring it into your organization, because in your community there's no tax revenue off of the development itself, and so they need to be phased in and brought in properly. And when we do them, we do them right. And that's one thing I think is very important for the clientele who are going to be living there. I want them to have a sense of pride when you ask them, Where do you live? I live here, like in our towns. I live in the Mountain View apartments. I'd say, if you could put a picture of that place in this it's a show. But I'm talking about putting a picture of that one in here. We have people drive by that and some were asking, are those for sale? Are those for rent? Is that affordable? And they'll say, that's affordable housing. They say, yes, it is. So that's my goal with it. It's so nice that you have a vision for that because, oh, it's always an ongoing issue in California, especially around here. So especially if you buy affordable housing as a college kid, you need to get that kind of housing. Probably work with some President Walter over there and see what could be done to build the affordable housing aspect for the students out there. They needed to be dorms. They just have affordable housing, just for college students. 

What are some ways that you plan to support the city's youth and education initiatives?

Well, I think one, we have a great recreation and parks department. They do a lot of nice programming. I have an athletic background. I spent a lot of time in my youth at the YMCA at the Boys and Girls Club. So I know the importance of those programs growing up. I also learned the importance of sports and building character, teaching kids how academics are important, i.e., staying eligible to play. You have to know teamwork, how to lose. You know, I think you also need to reach out to the youth and find out, what do you want to be involved in? We need to do an E Sports League. A lot of kids are like, let's do an E Sports League. One of the things we've done in Fillmore is for children with disabilities, we started doing a lot of adaptive sports. So we did an adaptive basketball league last year. We called the Fillmore legends, and one of our local businesses donated jerseys to it, and it was a phone call to me –I thought– it was a Wednesday, and on Sunday, we had started, let's do it. And we did have a second year. This year, we had an adapted time frame for a trunk or treat program for Halloween. Got a lot of noise, got a lot of candy, more toys being given out to the children. So those are things that we're looking at. You're trying to include all of the community. Especially, that's a community that usually gets overlooked with the disabled children at that point in time. And then education wise, that we have facilities we might be able to offer up for after school classes. I think we'll have them at the high school to open up free space. You know? Maybe you can have parents volunteer their time to help teach a class with a good ad. Who knows? It's wide open, but we need to support the youth, they're our future, and we need to give them opportunities to excel.