GovLove - A Podcast About Local Government · Engaging Local Government Leaders (ELGL)

Form of Government Change and Elected to City Manager with Deb Mohlenhoff, Ithaca, NY

·1 hr

Ben Kittleson opens from Jacksonville and frames the conversation around changing a form of government and moving from elected office into city management. The guest lays out the city's path. The city had been working under a strong-mayor model, and that setup put too much on one person. The mayor had to handle the public face of the job and keep the city represented locally, regionally, and sometimes federally. The same person also had to keep day-to-day operations moving. A dynamic younger mayor made the strain easier to see. Community members and civic leaders began noticing the gaps in bandwidth and presence. That pressure helped push the city toward a chief of staff role. The role did not work like a deputy mayor or a COO. It did not control the departments. Even so, it brought more stability to the daily coordination of city work. That made it a useful bridge. It also gave the city a way to test whether a more structured management layer would help. The experiment seemed to show real value. In January 2021, the mayor created a working group. The guest co-chaired it with the chief of staff at the time. From there, the conversation follows the slow, practical work of evaluating a city-manager direction. The episode stays grounded in municipal mechanics rather than headline-making politics. It ends with the sense that governance change happens through careful steps and a lot of coordination.

As heard by us

A clear look at how a city reshapes its leadership structure.

GovLove spends this episode on the plain mechanics of a city changing how it governs itself. The guest explains why a move away from a strong mayor model put too much weight on one office, why a chief of staff helped ease the load, and how the city began testing a city manager…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want the nuts and bolts of how a city moves from strong mayor to city manager.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify