The best advice I got about being mayor

One of the most useful pieces of advice I received as mayor came from former Green Bay Mayor Roman “Romie” Denissen.

As I remember it, his message was simple: if all the advice reaching the mayor comes from inside City Hall, the mayor is in trouble.

I have always treated that line as a paraphrase rather than an exact quotation. What stayed with me was the operating principle behind it.

City employees know how public systems work. They understand legal requirements, budgets, infrastructure, services, and the history behind earlier decisions. Council members hear from people across their districts and make public choices about the city's direction. Formal reports and scheduled meetings are essential.

They are not the whole city.

The person living beside a difficult intersection notices patterns that may never appear in a traffic summary. A small employer experiences a permit timeline through payroll and customer commitments. A parent understands how a park, bus route, school crossing, or city program fits into a family's day. A neighborhood leader sees which concern keeps returning after the meeting ends.

That knowledge reaches a mayor only if the office creates ways to hear it.

During my years as mayor, I spent substantial time at neighborhood meetings, schools, businesses, nonprofit gatherings, ribbon cuttings, retirement events, funerals, faith-community events, and public celebrations. My campaign-approved biographical sources describe that pattern as more than 500 community events in a typical year. The number comes from my own record and should be understood as candidate-reported, not an independently audited total.

The broader point does not depend on the exact count. Those events were part of how I learned what people were experiencing.

A formal public hearing has rules, time limits, and an agenda. It is necessary for official decisions. A conversation after a neighborhood meeting works differently. People may raise a concern they would not present at a microphone. They may explain why a technically correct answer still fails in practice. They may also point out something the city is doing well and the people responsible for it.

Being present does not mean promising everyone the answer they want. Residents often disagree with one another. A mayor still has to examine evidence, follow the law, work with the council and staff, and make decisions that can be explained publicly.

The value of listening outside City Hall is not automatic agreement. It is better information and fewer layers between a decision and the people living with it.

Visibility can also be confused with performance. Attending an event only for a photograph does not create responsive government. The useful test is whether the conversation changes what the mayor understands, whether the concern reaches the right person, and whether someone follows through.

Romie's advice became a reminder to keep the office from becoming insulated. It respected the knowledge inside City Hall while acknowledging that public administration can miss what daily life looks like from the other side of the counter.

Green Bay is too varied to be understood from one office or one circle of advisers. Its neighborhoods, businesses, institutions, workers, families, and community organizations experience city decisions differently.

The advice I carried through sixteen years as mayor was therefore not complicated: use the formal systems, value professional staff, and keep opening the door outward. Listen in the places where people already live and gather. Then bring what you learn back into the work and close the loop.