Leadership: The New & Old ICMA Chapter
As a current local government student and a future city manager, I know that being a leader is a quality that’s essential to the profession because other people count on you for direction, organization, and guidance. While getting my masters degree, I knew that among all of the activities I was a part of, I wanted to have the opportunity to develop my leadership skills at a greater level than I had in the past. I have a wide variety of experience in representing student voices, budgeting, debating ideas and policies relevant to students, and learning about my community at-large, but I knew I was lacking in experiences related to being a motivator and decision-maker. That’s where the Texas A&M ICMA Chapter really gave me the opportunity to develop.
Texas A&M University is a large, well-known university both in the State of Texas and in the United States. The Bush School at Texas A&M is known for its connections to many state and federal government agencies where its graduates often work. Nonetheless, the Bush School also has many great students interested in becoming local government employees and servants. The Bush School is working towards creating a stronger presence for local government experience and education within its MPA program. One important aspect of this is organizing students interested in local government to attend local government events, to create extracurricular learning experiences, to attend conferences, and more.
At the beginning of my public management course in Spring of 2019, my professor mentioned that he was interested in reestablishing an ICMA chapter at the Bush School as one had existed before but with leadership transitions, maintaining the chapter had fallen through. To contribute to this, I volunteered to join the organization and to attend the 2019 TCMA conference. From there, myself and another public management student Abby began reorganizing the ICMA chapter. We created a list of students we knew of that were interested in local government, scheduled a first chapter meeting, talked to first year classes about joining, created flyers for the chapter with contact information, and more. I created the agendas for our meetings thereafter, organized the other members of the chapter in planning for events, and acted as the key point of contact for the chapter.
Because we were able to restart the chapter, we were able to create unique events and opportunities to learn for the local government students at the Bush School. We visited Todd Mission, Texas where a Bush School alumni works as the city administrator to talk about his transition from student to local government servant. We also learned about some of the biggest things he had to learn when first getting started in city management like interlocal agreements, city code, and more.
From this experience as a whole, I was able to learn about how many different things go into ensuring events go well and that our relationship with other local government professionals is well-maintained. I learned a lot about communicating with other graduate students about what they’re interested in seeing the chapter do and how to translate that into tangible experiences. I also learned a lot about working with very awesome, yet very busy people and about envisioning what the chapter could be in the future.
Service: The Evolution of Community
Being a good steward of my community and serving others is something that has been taught to me by many great teachers and life experiences and this will make me a strong local government servant. One experience I had that allowed me to really understand what service means in the greater context of society was a course I was required to take as an undergraduate called the Evolution of Community. This course was a symposium-style course that brought in professionals from many walks of life to talk about what being a good community member meant in their profession and how their profession played a part in supporting "community" in Orlando in a larger respect.
In this course, I heard from an urban planner, a doctor, a few CEOs, a principal, a religious instructor, a musician, a retired athlete, an ethics professor, and more. I talk a little about this in my biography, but the lecture from the urban planner was especially poignant for me as a student. It really made me think about how our professions have the ability to be considerate and supportive of our communities or to ignore them. That we could be business-as-usual or we could show up until our community's needs were met. It made me think of my career not just as a job or a source of income, but as a vital aspect of my community that I should take pride in. That lecture, more than just about any other in the hundreds I've watched since I have been a college student, made an impact on me. The course as a whole really imprinted on me the idea that I do not exist to live a life that only serves myself. I was and to this day still am inspired to serve.
Lifelong Learning: In and Out of the Classroom
One way I demonstrate a commitment to lifelong learning, or the ongoing act of improving my knowledge and skills, is by my extracurricular and beyond-the-regular-requirements learning experiences. I have always envisioned myself as a jack of all trades who knew a bit about a bunch rather than a lot about a little which has led me to get involved with a wide variety of topics, fields, and professionals throughout my academic career. In my time as a graduate student at A&M, I took the initiative to learn in departments across campus and through activities across the community.
As graduate students, most of us have typical degree requirements that ask us to complete the courses which serve as building blocks to the public service professions. Some of these general courses at the Bush School include foundations of nonprofits, foundations of public service, macroeconomics, and quantitative methods. Beyond the general requirements, and the requirements for my public management track, I used my elective space to take courses related to local government across campus. I took graduate courses through the Urban Planning Department, in the Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Science Department, and in the Agricultural Economics Department and have graduated with two academic certificates on top of my MPA degree, in Sustainable Urbanism and in Community Development. Taking courses from departments across campus and completing two certificates outside the Bush School has given me insight into how other professionals like urban planners, real estate agents, and those in the hospitality industry work with city management professionals.
As a graduate student, I got involved in organizations and programs both inside and outside of the Bush School which also helped me build a wider-reaching understanding of city management and local government. In the Bush School, I learned a lot about city management in particular from running our ICMA Chapter, developing working relationships with local city management professionals, and attending both TCMA and ICMA conferences. In the Bush School, I was also a Bush Board Fellow for the Bryan/College Station Chamber of Commerce where I attended their board meetings and learned about the community at large, business needs in the area, and about the different interactions between the chamber and local government. Outside of the Bush School, I participated in a leadership academy for one of the local independent school districts. There, I learned about applying concepts from my budgeting coursework to real-world experiences, about working with elected officials, and about how different forms of local government interact.
Overall, learning across campus rather than just within my program and getting involved with different activities across the community have allowed me to enter the workforce with a stronger, more developed set of background knowledge related to local government than some of my peers have. I begin my career with previous experience working with urban planners, those in real estate, those in hospitality, other business professionals, those working in the governance of public education, nonprofit professionals, and more.
Teamwork: 2020 NASPAA-Batten Competition
Over the course of my graduate school career, I've learned about structured scenarios that demand immediacy and convenience in accomplishing a task. Teamwork is something that manifests in a variety of ways and should look different contingent on the context of a situation. Some teamwork, like my capstone project described below, is structured so that everyone contributes relatively equal parts that are thoughtfully considered and chosen. Other teamwork, like my experience as a competitor at the 2020 NASPAA-Batten Competition, occurs in situations with significant time constraints that create limitations in how a group can work together.
At the 2020 NASPAA-Batten Competition, graduate students competed in teams of 4-5 in utilizing a computer simulation to make strong transportation policy choices for their simulated city. In each round, team members held various local government roles that had an important relationship with transportation including the city manager, budget director, transportation director, public health official, and administrator of social services. The overall goal of the competition was to make policy choices that would lower the city's carbon footprint while increasing equity among citizens. There was a trick though: the teams only had breakfast to get to know each other and the rounds got shorter and shorter as time went on.
When my team began the competition, I started in the role of city manager which was, in essence, the team leader. My expectation for our teamwork was that, like my capstone beforehand, each team member would contribute equal amounts and that it'd be my job to filter through the different ideas team members had and facilitate conversations. I perceived my role, especially as the leader in the first round, to also be as someone who made sure everyone was included and that respect was the foundation of our teamwork. I quickly learned though, that the time constraints of this competition did not provide for all that. In the first round while I led, my team made some progress but we could also see that we weren't able to make choices fast enough if we all deliberated each one. In the next rounds, my teammates who took on the role as city manager took on increasingly efficient approaches to changing policy. In the end, my teammate Kelly's approach was to ask for policy ideas on certain subjects that needed work. Ultimately, she would either accept or reject them without discussion because there was so little time.
Overall, from this new competitive experience I learned that the best way for teamwork to be structured and to happen is dependent on context. I know the real world is not a competition with decreasing time limits, but I do know there are constraints put on situations and projects that don't allow for the perfect division of labor within a group or for everyone to really get to have an equal say in important conversations. Ultimately, it's important to understand what the constraints of a given situation will allow for the type of teamwork that's done to complete a project and to do one's best to meet the needs of the situation while also keeping one's values (like a foundation of equity, inclusion, and respect) in mind as much as possible.
Communication: Busy People, Important Work
My ability to communicate with a variety of stakeholders was strengthened while I interned for the City of Palm Bay, Florida this past summer. In Palm Bay, I learned that local government professionals, especially city managers and those working in their offices, have to not only know an incredible amount of information across departments and divisions, but that they're also the nexus of communication of this information for many large-scale, cross-office projects. While working for the city manager, I had the opportunity to practice and develop many forms of communication. I worked across departments on projects, with different mentors guiding me, through both in-person meetings, phone calls, and email conversations. Working across departments gave me the opportunity to develop how I communicate the importance of projects to professionals whose main duties lie elsewhere. When I worked with different mentors, I learned that they had different time constraints on their schedules and that I needed to strategize to figure out the best way to get information across to them. Additionally, during this internship, I learned the ins and outs of communicating through a variety of platforms. I found that communication via email was most convenient and best for most, but for some of the busier government workers in the city, I had to approach them for information in a variety of ways. I also found that in-person meetings, although relatively inconvenient, provided me the best opportunity to ask detailed questions and that I needed to prepare as much as I could beforehand to get the most out of the conversations. Working for the City of Palm Bay has allowed me to develop my ability to communicate with other professionals in an intentional way that was respectful of other professionals' time but that still allows me to get the information I need.
Public Service Perspective: Pocket Change Spent Wisely
My public service perspective has been developed through my evaluation of my experiences where ethical issues arose in public service contexts. Treating people well has always mattered to me and the scenarios in which I've seen people treated unfairly inspire me to do better. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Central Florida, I had the opportunity to participate in their student government as a fiscal chair and develop policies that articulated how student groups could use student fee money to put on events across campus. In my time doing so, I saw students who did not initially realize that the actions they took with their budgets and during the budgeting process had an important responsibility to be fair. The impact that has had on me is that I feel motivated to create, support, and implement policies that are fair for the people impacted by them.
Ethical Issues
As undergraduates, I and the students in student government around me were new to a lot of the ethical responsibilities we had. All student groups requested funds from a budget supported by student fees that all students pay. Because of this, the money spent from these funds is supposed to benefit students across campus. Nonetheless, mistakes were made that were inconsiderate but unintentional and not malicious. One example of this was when one student agency bought expensive rain jackets, socks, and blankets that went past respected use of student funds. This wasn’t an ethical use of funds because student fees were paid for by all students and therefore whatever was purchased with them was supposed to be in some way beneficial to all students. Leadership in their organization had done so in the past so they did not think critically about whether these purchases were ethical because that was the precedent set for them. Other smaller student organizations thought this was the norm and attempted to do so as well. This wasn’t fair because there was never an excess of funds in our overall budget. Other student agencies or student organizations had to miss out on funding for their projects or events because the requests always outweighed the money we had to budget.
Principles
One lesson I learned from this experience is that public servants should resolve ethical issues by examining the consequences of poor decisions, not relying on the status quo. In my experiences, it wasn't malice that created ethical issues but inconsideration for the impact of actions on other students. Knowing this, I am able to enter into situations and experiences where ensuring others are treated fairly is at the forefront of my mind.
Problem-Solving: Hurricanes in Florida
In the City of Palm Bay, I learned how to be a problem-solver. There, I saw that local government professionals are defined by their problem-solving skills. Citizens have concerns, local government professionals work to address them. To do so, local government professionals need the ability to gather data, research different policy options, and produce briefs on findings to move solutions forward. While working for the City of Palm Bay, Florida, I was tasked with researching solutions to issues with hurricane debris within Home Owner's Association (HOA) neighborhoods and was able to develop my problem-solving skills throughout the process.
The Problem
Home Owner's Associations and the people who live in the associated neighborhoods often have to finance hurricane debris removal in Florida themselves because they live on private roads and FEMA is particular about reimbursing local governments for that. This is a cause for concern for people living in HOAs because they pay the same taxes as citizens living off of public roads where the local government will pick up their debris. Local governments do this because FEMA typically reimburses for public roads. In Palm Bay, HOAs found out that a neighboring city had adopted an ordinance that potentially allowed FEMA to reimburse the city for debris removal on private roads and were interested in seeing the City of Palm Bay adopt the same thing. After the city manager heard this feedback, my task was to research this ordinance and determine if this was feasible.
Seeking Solutions
To do so, I started out by reaching out to FEMA to see if I could better understand what the intricacies are of when they will and when they will not reimburse based on the ordinance. I reached out to FEMA through multiple channels and didn't get a response so I moved on to reading through the appeals listed on their website for cases like this. Reading through these cases helped me understand the key components of these ordinances but left me with the understanding that there was a lot of gray area in these cases. From there, I reached out to the City of Melbourne which was the neighboring city that had adopted the ordinance to see whether it'd been successful or not. In discussion, I learned that they'd only had the ordinance for two years and hadn't received any reimbursements thus far because of how long the reimbursement process is. I also learned that in their second hurricane season with the ordinance, they opted not to utilize it and to go into an interlocal agreement with the county government instead, as counties usually get reimbursed more efficiently. Going into the agreement with the county meant they had to follow the county's ordinances and the county did not pick up from private roads. After not seeing much success in Melbourne, I looked to see if any other city in the county had adopted a similar ordinance and none had. Lastly, I sought out perspectives on the potential policy change from the other staff who worked on hurricane debris reimbursement, both in Public Works and in the Finance Department. In Public Works, they thought the ordinance would not change operations much but in the Finance Department, they were concerned over reimbursements.
End Results
In the end, I concluded there was not enough evidence to support that Palm Bay should adopt a new ordinance that may allow FEMA to reimburse. I concluded this because it was difficult to get straight answers from FEMA, because the neighboring city that tried out this policy had not seen any benefits from it at the time, and because the internal perspectives I got from individuals working in the City of Palm Bay expressed apprehension on putting more money at stake while dealing with FEMA's processes. I then submitted a policy memo to the city manager and deputy city manager of my findings. Being able to gather data, consider the outcomes of potential solutions, and communicate those implications were essential to making the important decision of whether or not to adopt the ordinance.
Capstone Project: Building Resilience
As an important graduation requirement, Bush School masters students must complete a year-long project called a capstone with a group of peers, a professor, and a client. My capstone course, working with Dr. Mary Hilderbrand and the nonprofit Ruta Civica, was tasked with examining different local government arrangements for disaster risk management with an emphasis on mitigation. We sought to inform Ruta Civica on strong practices for the governance of three important aspects of mitigation: coordination, information sharing, and communication. Ruta Civica will consider these practices and take them forward to local government officials in Mexico City. At the conclusion of this project, I am left with some important lessons. As the presentation manager, I learned key components for making a strong presentation that would resonate with my audience. As a team member, I learned about women's leadership from my capstone project managers that emphasized supporting both people and progress from the start.
On Presentations
Over the course of the past year, my capstone group met twice a week to develop our project and then get feedback and guidance from our professor. Each team member had similar general responsibilities with writing as well as a more specific individual role that supported the project as a whole. I was in charge of creating presentations for our team involving creating slideshows, practicing conveying complex information in front of a large audience, and speaking with the right tone to keep the audiences engaged. After each presentation, the audience, made up of other graduate students, would fill out forms to give us feedback on what we did well and what we could improve upon. Often, the feedback my group and I received was that our PowerPoint was well made and that we spoke with the right tone, inflection, and made the presentation enjoyable to listen to. What we could improve upon, though, was how well we convey the technical components of our research as those, within the short presentation, were hard for the audience to understand.
To make the technical components more understandable, I sat down and worked through where I thought people were getting a little lost in our presentations and I found that it was when we explained the key definitions that frame our research. What is mitigation, and how is it different from the other phases of the disaster risk management cycle? What do coordination, communication, and information sharing mean in this context? After outlining those, the clarity their definitions provided allowed me as a presenter to contextualize and sort the technical information that followed. It was easier to convey information once the audience had the same set of background information to connect it to.
From those experiences, I know that there are three major components of giving a strong presentation. First, coming in I already knew that having an easy-to-read, error-free presentation gives a presenter credibility to their audience. Second, I also knew pretty well that being friendly and welcoming during such a presentation puts the audience at ease and makes them more receptive to the ideas that you’re sharing. Third, I learned throughout the capstone process that being able to explain complex ideas in relaxed terms is necessary because although an audience may be very interested in a subject, they may not have the baseline knowledge needed to understand those complex ideas, so the presenter must use terms familiar to the audience and define terms audience members may not know.
On Women's Leadership
Along with being the presentations manager, I was also a member of a team of 10 graduate students, led by two wonderful women. This was something important to me because in my field women are highly underrepresented and in the past, I haven't often had the opportunity to learn from women leaders to the same extent that I've had the opportunity to learn from men. Women oftentimes lead differently than men and this was something I definitely wanted to know more about before I graduated. In many projects, I've participated in, the work has been first and foremost about how the task is completed. What steps need to be taken, and when. For this project, that was different. From the beginning, our project managers started with implementing strategies that supported respect throughout the long term project, developing ideas on how they could make sure each team member felt comfortable and supported, and enacting measures to keep team members accountable and work equitable. They didn't just want the work to be done, but also the team to develop throughout the process.
For me, learning about women's leadership during this project was a lot of watching how our managers created the outcomes listed above. Tangibly, this looked like creating an equity charter at the beginning of the year as a group where each of us detailed our roles and responsibilities. It looked like our project managers leaning into understanding individual needs throughout the group when an issue arose or when part of the work wasn't getting done to the quality it needed to be. It also looked like the managers celebrating the group when hard work was completed and them not allowing any individual member to take on an uneven amount of the project work. Overall, I learned generally about the tangible ways of creating a supportive group atmosphere that fosters care and considerations of others.
Conclusions
Working on a year-long project provided me the opportunity to explore skills in depth that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to do. I learned so much about the general topic of disaster risk management which our project centered around, but I also learned the very hands-on skill of being a better presenter and added some strategies for women's leadership to my leadership toolbox.