Essexville City Manager Craig Goulet

“I graduated from Essexville Garber in 1998, then enrolled at SVSU and got my bachelor's degree in Mathematics. It was challenging, but it was a life lesson and I appreciated it at a different level than if it came easy. I was originally looking at actuarial science and assessing risk for insurance companies. But I got married to my wife and we likely would have had to move to find work, so I got a job for a local business where I eventually became the warehouse manage. Then I had the opportunity to work for Bay County in the finance department, and then an opening as an Administrative Services Director came up. I applied and got the position. I spent the last five years in Bay County doing that: I loved working with the people and I learned a lot there. I was able to manage a bunch of different department and people, and I enjoyed it.

Then Essexville’s City Manager retired, applied, and got the job.

I enjoy being able to work in the community that I grew up in, the community my kids are growing up in. I'm absolutely thrilled to be working for the city of Essexville. It’s a very proud community. My grandpa was in their fire department in the 1950’s and there's something special about going back and helping the community you grew up in.

I think when you first come into a role like being a City Manager, my recommendation wouldn't necessarily be to immediately make changes. You have to understand what's going on first. What does a city clerk do? What does the city treasurer do? What does the deputy clerk do? Let's go look at the police side. How's your staffing? How's the fire department? There's a lot to learn, and it's okay to admit that you don't know everything, because you're not going to. There are good people here doing good work, so you ask them a lot of questions. You learn why things are done the way they are and go from there.

It was explained to me years ago that the government is like driving a train, not a car, so don't wear out your wheels trying to make changes too quickly and then become frustrated that there wasn't an immediate effect.

I'm a University of Michigan guy, a big Jim Harbaugh fan. Years ago, he was interviewed and asked how he thought the year would go for the team. He said, 'We're better today than we were yesterday, and we'll be better tomorrow than we are today.' That's how I approach anything I'm involved in. ‘Are we better today than yesterday?’,’ Are there plans to be better tomorrow?’.

I can definitively tell you yes, yes we are. Things will improve even more in the coming days. You always strive to make positive changes that impact the community, and when you can look back and see everything you’ve achieved, it's a great feeling.

A very good feeling.

“The goal is to make changes along the way that benefit the community as a whole: things that are short-term, mid-term, and long-term.

So short term, we've done some community events, we're planning our second major event—a Kids Fest that's coming up in September. Since 2020, there's a feeling of ‘we want to do things as a community’ and that feeling was what led to the tree lighting ceremony in December.

We've hired a code enforcement officer, not nearly as exciting to talk about but absolutely necessary. We instituted some things internally that I felt would be more fair to the residents, like providing reminders for water bills, for instance.

Mid-term improvements would be looking at staffing, and we've done tremendously well with hiring public safety officers. Staffing public safety is a challenge that every municipality across the country is trying to fix, but our full staff is eight and we now have seven. It wasn't at that number when I first hired and I'm very proud to say we're almost full because of how important that department is and how supportive the community is of our public safety.

Long-term, we are working on economic development. When I grew up, I would ride my bike down the street, I would go to a local shop there, buy baseball cards. A developer drove through and said, ‘Wow, this feels like a Hallmark community, everybody's walking, everybody's waving at you.’ People want to be part of that, so we’re working with Bay Future. They’ve got a good, strategic process over there and we’ve got a follow-up meeting soon to talk about how to recruit more businesses here. Those are long-term changes and not overnight, but we'll get there.

If folks want to contact me, I'm very available. You can call 989-893-2441, email me at citymanager@essexville.org, or stop by City Hall. I'm not hard to find– just look for the bald guy wearing a Michigan "M'' somewhere. "

- Essexville City Manager, Craig Goulet