AuthentiCity FM | Real Stories. Bold Ideas. Better Communities.

Bayside, Wisconsin is a village of about 4,400 people on the shore of Lake Michigan. Andy Pederson has managed it for more than twenty years, and later this month he becomes president of ICMA. We sat down with him before the annual conference in Long Beach to talk about what a small place teaches about leading at a much larger scale. Much of the conversation lives where jurisdictional lines start...

Ron Holifield has spent more than forty years in local government. He started in the city manager's office, then moved into the chair and went on to build the companies and networks that serve the profession, including SGR and Civic Marketplace. He no longer does city management, but he still calls himself a city manager. In this conversation, we talk about what that identity asks of people, a...

We are back. The return came wrapped in a run of eighties movie references, because of course it did, and underneath the fun was something real. After a few weeks of stepping away to enjoy the end of summer, we sat back down to do the thing leaders rarely allow themselves to do, which is stop long enough to notice what the pause was teaching us. This episode is part homecoming and part preview, a...

Coherence was the note the summer kept building toward, the thread that holds when everything else is pulling apart. This is the conversation about what that thread is actually for. We close the season with Bob O'Neill, former executive director of ICMA and one of the most respected thinkers this profession has produced, for an hour that keeps returning to a single idea, that the power that ma...

Some conversations wander. This one converges. After a summer spent working through truth and trust and the discipline of holding more than one version of what's real, we follow those threads to where they lead, which is coherence, and the clarity and curiosity that keep it alive. Coherence is the thread that holds when the forces you do not control try to pull everything apart. Clarity is what it...

Some leaders spend an entire career learning to stay out of the way. This conversation is with one who chose the opposite. Booker Hodges, police chief in Bloomington, joins us for an hour that circles back again and again to the thing holding all of it together, which is trust, and how little of the job works without it. We start where he started, with the mentors who shaped him and a coffee-stain...

This week we welcome Brent Messer, who spent eight years as chief information officer for the city of Chattanooga before moving to Info-Tech Research Group, and we welcome back Jerry Driessen, our first returning guest, whose career runs through some of the largest technology operations in local government. Together we spend an hour asking what the role of technology in a community actually is now...

Trust keeps moving. Across the last several generations, it lived first with the people we knew, then with the institutions we built, and now it is settling somewhere new again. In this episode, the three of us are back around the table together to follow that movement and ask what it means for the people who serve communities every day. We start with the numbers. The institutions Americans once l...

We are calling this one our midlife crisis episode, and not just because we hit episode forty. Phil is off recharging with his family, so it is just the two of us wrestling with something we have circled for a long time, the role that time itself plays in how we lead. We start with a simple distinction that changes how you see everything else, the difference between an event and a pattern. A potho...

There is something that happens when the familiar becomes invisible. You stop seeing it clearly, stop questioning it, stop asking whether it is actually working. For local government practitioners, that invisibility is one of the quieter threats to good judgment, and it sits at the heart of this episode. The hosts use an unlikely lens to open the conversation: World Cup tourists posting unfiltered...

#AuthentiCityFM #LocalGovernment #Leadership #PublicService #Discernment #CityManagementThis episode opens a summer series built around a question that has been sitting with the hosts for weeks. How do we develop discernment in a world where multiple truths are operating simultaneously? Rather than treating this as an abstract puzzle, the conversation grounds it in the everyday experience of local...

A year in, the hosts of AuthentiCity FM do what any self-respecting Gen X podcast should eventually do. They pull a clip show. Framed around Mike's encyclopedic knowledge of early Simpsons episodes and sprung on Corri and Phil with zero warning, Episode 37 is the one where the curtain comes back a little. What started as a joke that wasn't really a joke — three local government professiona...

Some careers accumulate experience. A few accumulate wisdom. Scott Neal has been a city manager every day of his professional life since June 1st, 1988, and this conversation is a rare window into what nearly four decades in the chair actually looks like, not the polished version, but the honest one. The episode opens with Scott's unlikely origin story, a biblical epiphany in an urban politics...

A generation that wants to make a difference is coming of age without a clear map for how to do it. Most of them have never heard of city management as a career. Fewer still understand that local government is where the most direct, tangible impact on people's daily lives actually happens. Dr. Shannon Portillo, Director of ASU's School of Public Affairs, NAPA fellow, and recently recognize...

What does loyalty actually require of you? Not the version that sounds good in a performance review. The version that asks you to disagree fiercely, hold your ground, and then execute faithfully on a decision that wasn't yours. That distinction is at the center of this conversation, and it runs through everything. This episode covers a lot of ground. What resilience looks like when the hard mo...

What does it take to stay in the same seat for 27 years and never stop asking what comes next? In this episode, we sit down with Michael Wilkes, the longest-tenured city manager in the history of Olathe, Kansas and the newly appointed President and CEO of the Alliance for Innovation. Michael spent nearly three decades building one of the most recognized local governments in the country, and this c...

What does it mean to be successful in local government? Not the version the profession has been selling for decades, the linear path from small city to bigger city to biggest chair, but the one that actually fits the life you are building and the work you want to do. Cori Burbach has been asking that question out loud, which takes more courage than it sounds. As Assistant City Manager in Dubuque,...

What does it actually take to build a high-performing organization? Not the version that sounds good in a strategic plan, but the one that holds when things get hard, when timelines compress, and when the instinct to just answer the question is faster than slowing down to ask a better one. Angela Nicholson has spent 23 years inside that question. As a labor negotiator, COVID EOC director for the C...

#AuthentiCityFM #LocalGovernment #Leadership #PublicService #CityManagement Something keeps coming up in the conversations people are having with us outside of this podcast. Not what's broken, but what they're starving for. And episode 30 is the answer we keep circling back to. Real connection. The kind that doesn't scale, can't be automated, and refuses to move at the speed the re...

The chaos didn't go away. The inbox is still full. But something shifted, and this episode is about what you do with that. We pick up where Episode 28 left off, with the question of whether we're competing for status or competing for meaning, and move quickly into something more useful. Because noticing the problem is only the beginning. What does it actually look like to stop performing and start...

You survived the disruption. You built the resilience. And somewhere between the council meetings and the 11 PM emails you didn't have to send, something started to stir. That's where episode 28 begins. Not with a crisis, but with a question. What happens when local government leaders stop white-knuckling it through the Fourth Turning and start actually noticing what's happening around...

#localgovernment #citymanagement #resilience Some people find their way into local government. Pam Davis knew exactly why she was going there, and then spent her career making sure others didn't have to find that path alone. Assistant City Manager in Boulder, Colorado, Pam brings one of the most distinctive origin stories we've heard. From teenage activist to Capitol Hill intern to the rea...

There's a difference between being ready and being prepared. Ready means you've checked the boxes. Prepared means you've lived in the questions long enough to know which ones matter. This conversation explores what it takes to step into a role everyone assumes you have completely figured out. The shift from colleague to leader when you stay in the same organization. The marathon-level...

#citymanagement #leadership #localgovernment Work has always been hard. But something shifted. Now it's harder to tell what's real and what's just amplified noise. Harder to know what deserves urgency and what's anxiety talking. Harder to find solid ground when everything keeps moving. This episode opens a new conversation about resilience. Not the grit-your-teeth-and-power-through...

#LocalGovernment #Leadership #Stewardship #PublicService #GenX #GenZ The future of local government doesn't start tomorrow. It's already here. Melissa Ochoa and Micah Eradiri are ICMA Local Government Management Fellows just starting their careers in public service. They're curious, grounded, service-driven, and already leading. They're also watching everything Gen X is building right now. Our mes...