By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
New St. Joseph City Manager, Mike Schumacher, saw opportunity in St. Joseph, luring him away from a city administrator role in Lebanon, Missouri.
Schumacher has moved from southwest Missouri to northwest Missouri, officially beginning his duties at City Hall late last month. Schumacher says he wasn’t looking for a job when the opening in St. Joseph came up.
“It’s ready to move forward. It’s ready to launch,” Schumacher says of the city during his first appearance with host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline. “In conversations with our elected officials and different people around the community when I was doing my homework if you will, it was clear there was energy and opportunity.”
Schumacher says the residents of St. Joseph are the customers for both the St. Joseph City Council and the City of St. Joseph staff.
Schumacher says he has observed energy and opportunity in St. Joseph.
“Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? What do we want to be?” Schumacher says the city needs to be asking the right questions. “And perhaps, most importantly, are we asking our customers what they want to see? At the end of the day, the residents of St. Joe are our customers. And if you view this as a private business, through that lens, what (do) our customers want us to be working on?”
Schumacher says it is vital for the city to listen to its customers, the city’s residents, if it expects to move the community forward.
“What do they want to see us work on? What do they feel we can do better on? Where are we falling short? Where are we doing okay?” Schumacher asks. “Through that process you hope to find this vision, this is what statistically our customers want to see.”
Schumacher says the city cannot move on intuition and guessing. It must know what residents want.
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