Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
That's the big debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump,
the question of the Haitian migrants who have been given
a temporary amnesty it's called and dumped into the town
of Springfield. This is not in debate. Sixty thousand person town,
(00:22):
twenty thousand people dumped there. That's a lot on a city.
And Donald Trump has been citing the fact that the
locals say that cats and dogs are being eaten, and
so it became a big part of the debate that
David Muir said, well, we called the city manager and
the city manager said it wasn't true. And it turns
(00:44):
out that's not true. They have been getting complaints. But
we were talking about city managers in the mix and
that that seemed like an interesting job to have. Some
of you will remember Matt Patrick's wife was the city manager,
or at least assistant city manager of one of the
(01:05):
outlying towns, and I always thought that would be kind
of a fun thing to do, right, to oversee a city.
You're not up for election, and if you really care
about efficiency and service and the delivery of services and
the operation of the functions of government, I want a
small government and I want a localized government, but I
(01:26):
want a good government. I always thought that'd be a
really cool thing to do. So our guest is Courtney Slatick.
Hopefully I'm pronouncing that correctly. That's what I was told
the city manager of Elkempo. Courtney, Did I get your
name right?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Close enough? All right? You say it. I've been called
all kinds of things, so i'll take that. One's Courtney
slat oh slatik.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Okay. Well, I hate to drop somebody in the bus
under the bus, under the but somebody pronounced it for me,
and as usual, he got it wrong. So first of all,
for people who don't know where El Campo is, we
thought that was the perfect size place and a perfect
(02:09):
kind of place. Is that where Greek Brothers is? Are
they in Wharton?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
That's right? You know we're it's in El Campo. We're
an hour southwest of Houston.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Okay, so take me there. If I'm leaving downtown and
I'm on fifty nine, okay.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
They just stay on fifty nine.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Well, hold on, I'm hugged three times, I've been carjacked twice,
and I'm not even to six ' ten, right, Okay,
so I'm going to stay on there. I want to
see are you from this area?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
No, not originally, but I've been in LQBA eighteen years,
so maybe all.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Right, we'll go with that. When I get to Highway six,
I want you to tell me. I want you to
just kind of quote the streets I'm going to pass
on my way to El Passo. Let me tell Campo.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, not until it takes you a lot longer to
see me streets or cities. I think it's probably you here.
If yeah, you pass through sugar Land, Richmond, Rosenberg, Kendleton. Uh,
there's a little town called Beasley somewhere in between, and
then you go to Orton and we're the next town.
(03:14):
We're account of about thirteen thousand people.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
People call it Kendleton because I've always heard Kenleton as
if there's not a d I know there is.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I don't. I don't know what.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Does it pay well to be a safe manager?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
I knew this was coming. Yeah, well I'm familiar with
the show. Uh, so yes, it can. It depends on
where you go, and obviously the public has a lot
to say about that. If you ask Al Campo residents
how much I made, some might say too much. And
if I called my peers and city government. They would
(03:50):
say not enough. I would just we put we publish it.
It's on our it's on our website under City of
El Campo. We publish how much I make every year.
It is public information. I think cities have a responsibility
to say what they do with their money, with the
citizens' money. We have to be accountable. I'm not seeing
that as much in these mission statements on seeing is diversity, equity,
(04:12):
inclusion and not a lot of accountability, transparency, responsibility. More
of that needs to be out there. And so to
your point on the city manager being called out regarding
the Haitian migrants and responsibility to answer that question honestly,
apolitically and make sure that information is out there, I
(04:35):
think we're missing the mark sometimes on that. A lot
of city managers are trying to do that, but I
think I think sometimes people get caught up in the
politics and unfortunately, uh that that suffers because of it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Ramon said, he looked it up and you make six hundred,
which is a lot more than I expected. That's really good.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Thanks, Michael. You're giving me some great favorite.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
That's what happens when you don't answer the question we
fill in with our own.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
It says that you you served as the budget manager
for the city of Friendswood, budget measure for the city
of College Station, and budget analysts for the state of Texas.
So let's go through how you end up the city
manager of the city of El Campo. Where were you born?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
College Station?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
College Station? All right? And where'd you go to high school?
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Am consolidated?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
And then you went to A and M where you
got a bachelor's of in political science. What was your GPA?
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Am I on a job interview?
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Well, no, you're on a life interview, Courtney. We're holding you,
We're putting you up on a pedestal. We just want
to see if you're worthy.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Hey.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Look, to be honest with you, it would be just
as fine with me if you barely passed, because it's
more inspiring, is it.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Oh? My final GPA was a three two. But I
did go to graduate school to I have to we're.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Getting to that. We're getting to that. I feel like
you underperformed and didn't put your full effort into it.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
That's fair enough. I was in college.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah, that's true. Master of Arts and Political Science from
sam Houston State University. And Master of Business Administration NBA
from the University of Texas at Tyler. And then what
was your first job.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Budget analysts with the city of College.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Station, And how did you like that?
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I loved it, but I was young. I had a
lot to learn, and we were blessed to have a
and m in our backyard, which meant there was continuous growth.
We had more money than we knew what to do with. Yeah,
you know, so we were literally giving money to arts
and things like that. So first out of that police
(06:43):
department budget. So now you know where I stand on
police for the rest of my career. Obviously, huge supporter
of them, and because that really shapes you, you know,
fundamentally who you are, and so that that was a
big motive. They didn't put me over park, thank god.
So I started out with police and I worked at
the City of Collegation for five years. Husband moved me
(07:06):
to Austin. We lived there for not quite a year.
I had I don't want to get political. I worked
for the say I'll offer you this the second day
as a budget analyst in the Texas Education Agency. Governor
Perry vetoed the budget. So the experience there was was
(07:27):
so different at the state, so different than at the
local level. I know you know this. Yes, it was
so good to get out of there. And I went
to work for Friendswood because as an agg I couldn't
read a map and drove quite a commute from Wharton
to Friendswood for seven or eight months. Then I've been
(07:49):
with El Campo eighteen years.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Hold on this moment. Courtney Slottick is the city manager
of El Campo and our guest coming up. You like
her so far?
Speaker 2 (07:58):
We do? Okay, everybody needs to be woke. I just
than left woke.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Courtney slotok is our guest. She is the city manager
of elp Campo and with the city manager in the
news in Springfield, Ohio, we wanted a city manager because
we kind of find it fascinating, you know, if you
talk about, as we often do, that government ought to
be more local. You know. That was the point of
the original Confederacy of states that were brought together as
(08:31):
the United States in one federal system. Was the idea
that the states didn't want to give up their identity.
South Carolina was very different from Pennsylvania and New York,
Virginia particularly, and the states did not want to give
up their sovereignty and decision making and policies and culture
to the very powerful early on state of Virginia and
(08:53):
as well as New York and Pennsylvania. They wanted to
retain their own independence. So as that United States was formed,
you will notice that the Constitution is a document that
restricts the powers of government instead of providing powers of
government and the Bill of Rights, it protects the individual
against government. So I love the idea of localized government,
(09:14):
the state instead of the federal, the local instead of
the state, and a well run community is a real pleasure.
I mean it is our small towns unfortunately, and you're
seeing this all over You've see this in Belleville, You're
seeing this in Waco, you're seeing this in Brenham, where
there's this just explosion of people getting out of the
Houstons and the Dallases because the big cities have gone
(09:37):
to hell and they're moving into these towns. Unfortunately, a
lot of times they're bringing the problems with them that
they were fleeing without even realizing it. See California come
to Texas as the same theory. Courtney Slotick is our
guest city manager of El Campo all right, we've worked
through what she makes. Let me figure out her husband's
bank in big money. You live in Wharton or El Campo?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
I live in El Campo.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
How many police officers does Civel Campbell have?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Our total police staff is forty four. But that's this
girls on top of it.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
That's the old budget. That's the old budget. Analyst size
of her. She knows how many firefighters.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
No, we don't. We don't have that many. I mean
that commissioned. And obviously some of our positions that that
our civilian positions. That includes our chief he's not a civilian,
but our secretary that works there, as well as our
animal control officers and our school resource officers. So, but
public safeties obviously early on in my career, that's how
(10:37):
we started to continue to be a priority for me
and for the council.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Ramon wants to know if we can ride along with
the dog catcher. We've done a lot of police right along.
We want we want to ride along with the doctor.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
You want to? We could, We could set that up.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
I bet y'all got some little bitty stuff that we
never even thought about doing a ride along on. I
bet y'all got some stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
We probably, I mean, some things come to mind. Yet
probably in a small town. That's that's how that usually works.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
How many firefighters? Which how many? How many uh uh
classified employees you have in the fire department.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It's a volunteer.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Oh volunteer, okay, all right? And yeah, do you do
you allocate anything in your budget to them?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
A little over two hundred thousand dollars a year and
like much. But we're small. There's a whole host of things.
We pay for their medical exams, we pay for their retirement,
we pay for their workers' comp for their chemicals, for
their uniforms. We also last year we boughtom a one
point seven million dollar ladder truck.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
They would vot to approves voters.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Uh yeah, yeah, people like that and they approve things
like that and bondishuances. So uh, that's how we work
with them. I get the privilege of serving on their
pension board. Uh. But their volunteers are ems is in
how we have fourteen We have a total of fourteen
in our enough department. That's paramedics plus a director and
(12:08):
a director.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
So how many how many residents do you have in
the city of El Campo?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
What twelve six hundred and fifty, but I don't think
that counts. I put it closer to thirteen. But our
growth rate is really small.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
That's how it orange was.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Oh okay, I didn't know if you were alluding to
the town or the fruit like this lunchtime. I understand how.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Many total employees of the city overall, including classified police, fire, well,
police EMT and all that.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
One hundred and twenty four.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Oh that's pretty lean.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Thank you. Please tell my residence that no, yeah, we
don't outsource a lot. So of course that number can
look differently unless you can textualize it. It's really hard
to understand how many people you need. You know, what
do we actually do? Meaning you know, we've this budget
(13:10):
cycle has been kind of kind of fun this year,
and one of the statements with out there was, well,
you've added a bunch of positions, but we need to
qualify that. The state of Texas said we have to
have a police officer and every school, so we did that,
and that means adding personnel, right, And we've taken services
that were provided by contractors that decided to sell their
(13:31):
company to another company out of state, and we said
that's not going to work, so we're going to provide
IC and house and so that number has grown quite
a bit over the last eighteen years. But I still
think every decision and every position has to be approved
by counsel, and so we list them all on the
budget document. And like I told you exactly how much
(13:53):
we fail.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Now honestly, why she makes six hundred thousand dollars a year.
She's good. This girl is on top of it.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Do you have kids?
Speaker 2 (14:03):
I have one?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Why do you say like that?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
She said kids, I just have the one. We have
a sixteen year old daughter that's actively applying for college
right now.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
If I were to ask, what's your daughter's name, Tara,
Kara with the c Tara with a tea Tara. T
If I were to ask Tara what her mom does,
how closely could she approximate what you actually do?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Oh, I think she's nail it. I do because she
used to sit in on council meetings because she was interested,
and she's taking ap government, so she kind of she
kind of has figured it out. I went at a
very young age, I kind of explained what city management
versus the policymakers, what they do.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
What did your parents do. What do your parents do?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
My mom? My mom is a teacher or was a teacher.
She's definitely, she's retired. And my father was in project
management construction.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Is he still.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
You know?
Speaker 1 (15:08):
And your mother lives.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Where Richmond and del Web, Oh yeah, she like it.
I loved it there. It's a great community.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah. I hear good things about about that community. I've known.
In fact, I've heard from from folks that live there
that listen to the show. I figured you had some
public service in your family. I got that sense from
your values in your life. Of course, No, I did,
And so I'm not surprised that your mother was a teacher,
father was a veteran. No, I wouldn't have surprised me.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
So if I were to if I were to ask residents,
all kidding aside, if there is something that people would
criticize you about, what would it be? Doesn't mean you're
necessarily wrong for it?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Is this like the interview question where you say what's
your great weakness and they say yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
When people can't give me the greatest weakness, that's always
what it's like.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
No, there's you know, no, no, no city manager is perfect.
I think, Uh, sometimes our messaging can be better. Uh.
We need to We need to be out there with
our citizens more. We need to be more visible. We
need to do a better job of communicating. I'm on
our local radio, uh every other week trying to get
(16:28):
our message out and uh in the newspaper. But I
think sometimes we get caught up in government and we
we we assume everyone knows what we know and uh,
we're not able to articulate that vision because we were
So I've never worked with the private sector, so uh,
I've only been the public sector my entire life. So
(16:48):
I think we lose sight of how how that looks
for people that are in the private sector. And so
I would say, you know, if there's if there's a
weakness on my side, a couple of things. The first is,
I don't I don't necessarily run the city like a
budget like a business. There there's pros and cons to that,
because I've because of the inherentness of working only in
(17:10):
local government my whull career. But the other side is
we we don't do there there There can be there
can be times when I think we've got in our
head that it has to be a certain way, and uh,
it takes us a while to get things to get
(17:31):
to the other uh, to get to the more business
minded ideas. Maybe I don't know how to word that better.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Courtney sladek is the city manager of the city Ville
Passo More with her com.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Michael Bailey Show.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Did I say El Paso? I'm sorry, Ramon said, I
went to break saying El Paso. I meant El Campo.
It's the same thing you did. El Paso and El Campo.
You can actually say them interchangeably. They're the same town.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah, they're interchangeable. Now, Yes, that's okay because we get
mail from El Paso all the time. Yeah, we really.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
After the city manager of Springfield, Ohio was in the news,
we wanted the city manager of our own And now
Campo has a reputation as being a well run city.
You know, folks, I got to tell you, being the
mayor pro tem of the City of Houston opened my
eyes to something and my nose and my ears to
something that was a screeching sound and a foul smell.
(18:23):
How big city governments run is awful. The amount of fraud,
the amount of waste, the amount of inefficiency, the dereliction
of duty, the people who are overpaid and underperforming, the
number of people who don't show up to work for
long periods of time, the amount of theft in government.
It's a morass of evil. It's horrible, and that's why
(18:47):
nothing can get done. It's why the city services are
so poorly done. And you see good people that sign
up to serve in the police department or the fire
department or public works or any other and you feel
bad for them because they're in a situation that is
like a Kafka movie, a Kofka a book, and it's tragic,
it's sad. But then you see these towns and that's
(19:11):
what they are to me, more a town than a city.
And I say that in a good way. That are
they don't get involved in all that. They don't have
these far flown programs, they don't try to have sister
city relationships, and the mayor is not traveling to on
these supposed, you know, trips that are all junkets, really,
and they don't try to be competitors in New York.
They deliver city services. And as geeky and nerdy as
(19:36):
that may make me seem, I love that. I love
what this woman does. I love the thought of being
really really good at being ethical and efficient and customer
service oriented, even when sometimes the citizens may not appreciate it.
That kind of stuff that thrills me. That's what I
thought government service was going to be. Courtney Slottik is
her name. She is the city manager of either El
(19:59):
Campo or El p Hasso, you take your choice. But
she lives in Wharton, So just think about that when
you sid work with what she lives.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
No, that's that's when I started my career.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Oh, you didn't make six hundred thousand a year back then.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
No.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Yeah, you know. The unfortunate thing is we're going to
end this interview with people thinking you make six hundred
thousand dollars a year and that that will have been
your fault.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I'll take the blame on that line.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
I love your passion for this.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
I really I do, Courtney, because I love you. Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
No, I just think there's this general distrust and disfranchisement
with the government as a whole. And I understand it,
like especially at the federal level and state level, but
so it leaks down naturally to the local level, and
so there's this giant distrust and I well understood, but
(20:55):
because of the way the world works now and social
media and and well even even writing letters the editor,
I think things are misunderstood. And in a small town
you have a chance to sort of address that. And uh,
you don't just have the chance, you have a responsibility
to And so I'm grateful that you recognize what city
(21:20):
management should be and is I think it's a noble profession.
I don't think it's always easy. But at the end
of the day, I think the city managers across the
state Texas and probably across the country, they just want
they just want cities to be livable and provide quality
life with their citizens, because that's what we do.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
I agree with that. I agree with that you have
an elected mayor, presumably.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
I do every two Well, it's complicated. Do you want
me to walk it through that or is that a way? Sure?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
No, I have a little experience, and you can kind
of compare and contrast. I have a friend by the
name of Jimmy pap Us, and he's the mayor of
Hunter's Village Creek Point over in the Villages, and it's
all kidding aside. It's a very very well run community
(22:15):
and he is for the elected, unpaid mayor that has
a city manager. He is very hands on, very passionate,
very committed to good fire service. It's a shared fire
service amongst the villages, a shared police service amongst the villages.
And they're both very efficient, very good water construction safety.
I mean, he is all over it for guy that
(22:37):
makes no money doing this, but he's passionate about it.
And I've met his city manager and he's kind of
a good sport. And it's the way it's supposed to work, right,
the operations guy and the more kind of political face
of the community. And I'm assuming that's probably the way
y'all work.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
That's exactly how we work. But when we vote, we
have four large positions, and I apologize, we have four
district positions and three at large positions and they're elected
every other year. This is getting boring fast, So let
me jump to it. The person.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
I love this sort of stuff. You have no idea.
I think I'm the first person that ever read the
charter of the City of Houston and quoted it at
city council meetings and people thought I was a weirdo.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah, Well, our charter had to change because of this,
the person that gets the most at large votes becomes
the mayor, so they're not on the ballot of the mayor,
but they have to get the most votes to be
the mayor. It's very unusual and that goes back to
something that happened in the eighties when they tried to
redistrict here, but the DOJ denied it. They said it
(23:43):
wouldn't be fair to minority. So city found a work
around to say, the person that gets the most votes
becomes mayor. Now you don't have to go through the
DJ for that clearinghouse, so you know, is when that
you redistrict. It's just I'm sure you're familiar with that process.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yes, yes, I enjoy that sort of stuff. I enjoyed
our budget process. There were people I enjoyed, you know.
I came on to city Council in January of two,
having been elected in oh one, and the zero based
budgeting phase had kind of had kind of the trend
(24:27):
had come and gone. But I love the concept. And
for those of you who don't know anybody's been in
business for a while, particularly budgeting, those zero based budgeting
is a reaction to what creeps the ineptitude the inefficiencies
that creep into the budgeting process, which is, if a
department gets four hundred thousand one year, then the next
(24:48):
year they think they're getting four hundred thousand and they
just fight for an incremental amount and so on. Once
a bad budgetary allocation is made, then the idea, how
do we get rid of it? Well, it's there so
zero based budgetings where you start over and go, we're
not giving you four hundred thousand. Show me how much
you should get because it may only be two hundred,
it might be seven hundred. But let's start over from scratch.
(25:08):
It's a much more painful, deep dig into the facts,
but it's a better way to run things. Courtney Slottick
is our guest. She's the city manager of either El
Paso or El Campo. She makes six hundred thousand dollars
a year and she'll be our guest coming up.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
But everybody knows who this guy is. Come on, man,
mit the Michael Berry, Come on.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Courtney Slottick is our guest. She has graciously agreed to
spend her time in the barrel, and she's a good
sport about it. She's from a college station and she
is apparently a nuts and bolts, x's and o's, blocking
and tackling, get it done, city manager. And this is
why small towns work better than big cities. Now, small
(25:51):
town residents don't believe that. Small town residents will tell
you that there was a leaf on their street that
didn't get picked up for three days the other day,
that's not a bad thing. That's why small towns are
better run than big cities is because the people are
so obsessive about every detail. It's the broken paint theory.
In a big city they go, I'm just glad there's
(26:11):
not a dead body waiting out there for three days.
And that's the difference. It's a lot harder to be
the city manager of a small town like El Paso
slash El Campo than it is the city of Houston.
Is the city of Houston. There's no expectation your doors
can be unlocked as you're driving along by hitting a pothole.
That's so big, children are lost into potholes. I mean,
(26:32):
it's bad. They don't expect anything to be good, But
in a place like this they do. Courtney, what is
your don't give me some bs, you know, pie in
the sky answer, what is your thrill when you go in,
what's a win for you in a day? What's the
thing that you do that you really enjoy doing.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
I love how you set that up, So any answer
I shuld how people will go.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I just like to make a difference.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
No, that's okay, obviously, I mean you wouldn't be doing that.
But why don't I give you an example? Would that
be better if I give you, like a concrete.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Example of course specificity?
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Sure? Okay. So we had a one hundred year old
cast iron water line in the ground underneath Highway seventy one.
For over one hundred years, this thing kept breaking and
we kept patching it breaking, patching, breaking, pat in the
middle of a highway, right, So you can imagine how
fun that is for not just the people working on
(27:37):
the line, but the people trying to traverse. They're trying,
they're just trying to go north and they can't get
past these lines. And we were able to replace that line,
and we abandoned the line in place old cast iron
line put in a new new line. It sounds really weird,
but it feels so good to know that we took
(28:00):
care of something, even though this isn't something our citizen
c They don't really it doesn't really affect, but it
feeds every single costal business on seventy one. I mean
every there's dozens of them. There's probably forty of them,
and that's all set off of that line. And to me,
(28:22):
even if you can't see it, even if a resident
can't appreciate it, this is the work we do.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Ye no, yeah, and it makes a difference even if
you don't get credit. Courtney. There are people out there
right now, men or women, who, if they're honest, they
would say that they derive utility. We don't want to
say joy because it's utility maybe out of before they
go to bed, cleaning, wiping down the countertops and making
(28:50):
sure there are no dishes in the sink. I don't
leave the office every day until my emails are zeroed out.
Ramon laughs about it because I'll say, I need ten
more minutes. What do you do on? Every email has
to be zeroed out, every document has to be removed
from my desk, everything has to be turned off. And
then I as I get to the door, I turn
back and I look back and I make sure everything
(29:11):
is perfect. So I walk into a perfect office when
I go to bed, I go past the sink. I
make sure everything is wiped down there are you know,
little things like that give me joy. I am restoring
order to a chaotic world, and that gives me utility.
What you're doing is providing the infrastructure and the basis
(29:33):
for families and businesses and human beings to thrive. And
that's not always glamorous, but if that gives you joy,
you're wired that way.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yep. Like you, I have the same routines. So yeah,
if you walk by my office, just not a paper
at a place. But maybe that's more telling my personality
than as a city manager.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
It's just nobody that also says that you are well
suited for what you do. You know, there's something to
be said for people. Jim Collins wrote a book called
Good to Great. If you haven't read it, you should.
Ed Young prescribed it for me in early two thousand
and two and I've read it multiple times and I've
told people to read it. And he said that if
(30:22):
a well functional organization needs the right people on the bus,
but the right people need to be in the right seat,
you are clearly on the right bus, the right person
to be on the bus, and in the right seat. Courtney,
do you do internships. I think you'd be a great
person for young folks to trail around because no, No,
(30:45):
here's why. You give me hope that there are good
people in government. And I want young people to see
that because government's not about giving speeches and brochures and
mailers and glossy campaigns. Government is about functioning for the people.
You can't really say no, now, can you? What an
(31:05):
ass you would sound like, Well, that's all nice, Michael,
but no, I don't want some intern trailing around me.
No thanks, No, I mean we have before.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
We're open to it. One thing is they speak at
conferences sometimes and I get people walk up to me
afterwards and we exchange numbers. And I take that extremely seriously. Uh,
there's a young woman in Wharton. They graduate from ut
and in the Bush School, and now she's working for the
city of sugar Land. She and I exchange numbers. Come on,
(31:37):
I'll be your mentor we'll do this. You may need
some hips along the way. I've been doing this. I've
been doing this a while, and so if I can
help you, or inspire you, or or just listen to you,
I'm here because people have done that for me, and
so I know that absolutely we were open to internships.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
I know you listen to the sh so you've heard
me appreciate. But get yourself a mentor. Find somebody you
want to be like and if that's a Courtney Slaught
And by the way, it's not just for women. You
can be a man and have a female mentor. People
tend to find same sex mentors. It naturally occurs, but
(32:18):
doesn't have to be and it doesn't have to be
Courtney Slot. It could be the police chief, or a
pastor or most anything else. Having a mentor has been
a huge part of my success at every step of
the way. And this is the type of person that
you want to you know, under promise and over deliver
(32:40):
and have write your recommendation because you showed up and
worked hard and made a difference and didn't distract her.
It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Courtney.
It really is Courtney slotok, city manager of El Campo,
and that portends good things for El Campo that someone
as buttoned up as you is looking at the little
(33:02):
things so everybody else doesn't have to worry about it.
Thanks for being our guest. Weetheart.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
I appreciate it. Michael
That's the big debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump,
the question of the Haitian migrants who have been given
a temporary amnesty it's called and dumped into the town
of Springfield. This is not in debate. Sixty thousand person town,
(00:22):
twenty thousand people dumped there. That's a lot on a city.
And Donald Trump has been citing the fact that the
locals say that cats and dogs are being eaten, and
so it became a big part of the debate that
David Muir said, well, we called the city manager and
the city manager said it wasn't true. And it turns
(00:44):
out that's not true. They have been getting complaints. But
we were talking about city managers in the mix and
that that seemed like an interesting job to have. Some
of you will remember Matt Patrick's wife was the city manager,
or at least assistant city manager of one of the
(01:05):
outlying towns, and I always thought that would be kind
of a fun thing to do, right, to oversee a city.
You're not up for election, and if you really care
about efficiency and service and the delivery of services and
the operation of the functions of government, I want a
small government and I want a localized government, but I
(01:26):
want a good government. I always thought that'd be a
really cool thing to do. So our guest is Courtney Slatick.
Hopefully I'm pronouncing that correctly. That's what I was told
the city manager of Elkempo. Courtney, Did I get your
name right?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Close enough? All right? You say it. I've been called
all kinds of things, so i'll take that. One's Courtney
slat oh slatik.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Okay. Well, I hate to drop somebody in the bus
under the bus, under the but somebody pronounced it for me,
and as usual, he got it wrong. So first of all,
for people who don't know where El Campo is, we
thought that was the perfect size place and a perfect
(02:09):
kind of place. Is that where Greek Brothers is? Are
they in Wharton?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
That's right? You know we're it's in El Campo. We're
an hour southwest of Houston.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Okay, so take me there. If I'm leaving downtown and
I'm on fifty nine, okay.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
They just stay on fifty nine.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Well, hold on, I'm hugged three times, I've been carjacked twice,
and I'm not even to six ' ten, right, Okay,
so I'm going to stay on there. I want to
see are you from this area?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
No, not originally, but I've been in LQBA eighteen years,
so maybe all.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Right, we'll go with that. When I get to Highway six,
I want you to tell me. I want you to
just kind of quote the streets I'm going to pass
on my way to El Passo. Let me tell Campo.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, not until it takes you a lot longer to
see me streets or cities. I think it's probably you here.
If yeah, you pass through sugar Land, Richmond, Rosenberg, Kendleton. Uh,
there's a little town called Beasley somewhere in between, and
then you go to Orton and we're the next town.
(03:14):
We're account of about thirteen thousand people.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
People call it Kendleton because I've always heard Kenleton as
if there's not a d I know there is.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I don't. I don't know what.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Does it pay well to be a safe manager?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
I knew this was coming. Yeah, well I'm familiar with
the show. Uh, so yes, it can. It depends on
where you go, and obviously the public has a lot
to say about that. If you ask Al Campo residents
how much I made, some might say too much. And
if I called my peers and city government. They would
(03:50):
say not enough. I would just we put we publish it.
It's on our it's on our website under City of
El Campo. We publish how much I make every year.
It is public information. I think cities have a responsibility
to say what they do with their money, with the
citizens' money. We have to be accountable. I'm not seeing
that as much in these mission statements on seeing is diversity, equity,
(04:12):
inclusion and not a lot of accountability, transparency, responsibility. More
of that needs to be out there. And so to
your point on the city manager being called out regarding
the Haitian migrants and responsibility to answer that question honestly,
apolitically and make sure that information is out there, I
(04:35):
think we're missing the mark sometimes on that. A lot
of city managers are trying to do that, but I
think I think sometimes people get caught up in the
politics and unfortunately, uh that that suffers because of it.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Ramon said, he looked it up and you make six hundred,
which is a lot more than I expected. That's really good.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Thanks, Michael. You're giving me some great favorite.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
That's what happens when you don't answer the question we
fill in with our own.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
It says that you you served as the budget manager
for the city of Friendswood, budget measure for the city
of College Station, and budget analysts for the state of Texas.
So let's go through how you end up the city
manager of the city of El Campo. Where were you born?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
College Station?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
College Station? All right? And where'd you go to high school?
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Am consolidated?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
And then you went to A and M where you
got a bachelor's of in political science. What was your GPA?
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Am I on a job interview?
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Well, no, you're on a life interview, Courtney. We're holding you,
We're putting you up on a pedestal. We just want
to see if you're worthy.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Hey.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Look, to be honest with you, it would be just
as fine with me if you barely passed, because it's
more inspiring, is it.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Oh? My final GPA was a three two. But I
did go to graduate school to I have to we're.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Getting to that. We're getting to that. I feel like
you underperformed and didn't put your full effort into it.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
That's fair enough. I was in college.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah, that's true. Master of Arts and Political Science from
sam Houston State University. And Master of Business Administration NBA
from the University of Texas at Tyler. And then what
was your first job.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Budget analysts with the city of College.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Station, And how did you like that?
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I loved it, but I was young. I had a
lot to learn, and we were blessed to have a
and m in our backyard, which meant there was continuous growth.
We had more money than we knew what to do with. Yeah,
you know, so we were literally giving money to arts
and things like that. So first out of that police
(06:43):
department budget. So now you know where I stand on
police for the rest of my career. Obviously, huge supporter
of them, and because that really shapes you, you know,
fundamentally who you are, and so that that was a
big motive. They didn't put me over park, thank god.
So I started out with police and I worked at
the City of Collegation for five years. Husband moved me
(07:06):
to Austin. We lived there for not quite a year.
I had I don't want to get political. I worked
for the say I'll offer you this the second day
as a budget analyst in the Texas Education Agency. Governor
Perry vetoed the budget. So the experience there was was
(07:27):
so different at the state, so different than at the
local level. I know you know this. Yes, it was
so good to get out of there. And I went
to work for Friendswood because as an agg I couldn't
read a map and drove quite a commute from Wharton
to Friendswood for seven or eight months. Then I've been
(07:49):
with El Campo eighteen years.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Hold on this moment. Courtney Slottick is the city manager
of El Campo and our guest coming up. You like
her so far?
Speaker 2 (07:58):
We do? Okay, everybody needs to be woke. I just
than left woke.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Courtney slotok is our guest. She is the city manager
of elp Campo and with the city manager in the
news in Springfield, Ohio, we wanted a city manager because
we kind of find it fascinating, you know, if you
talk about, as we often do, that government ought to
be more local. You know. That was the point of
the original Confederacy of states that were brought together as
(08:31):
the United States in one federal system. Was the idea
that the states didn't want to give up their identity.
South Carolina was very different from Pennsylvania and New York,
Virginia particularly, and the states did not want to give
up their sovereignty and decision making and policies and culture
to the very powerful early on state of Virginia and
(08:53):
as well as New York and Pennsylvania. They wanted to
retain their own independence. So as that United States was formed,
you will notice that the Constitution is a document that
restricts the powers of government instead of providing powers of
government and the Bill of Rights, it protects the individual
against government. So I love the idea of localized government,
(09:14):
the state instead of the federal, the local instead of
the state, and a well run community is a real pleasure.
I mean it is our small towns unfortunately, and you're
seeing this all over You've see this in Belleville, You're
seeing this in Waco, you're seeing this in Brenham, where
there's this just explosion of people getting out of the
Houstons and the Dallases because the big cities have gone
(09:37):
to hell and they're moving into these towns. Unfortunately, a
lot of times they're bringing the problems with them that
they were fleeing without even realizing it. See California come
to Texas as the same theory. Courtney Slotick is our
guest city manager of El Campo all right, we've worked
through what she makes. Let me figure out her husband's
bank in big money. You live in Wharton or El Campo?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
I live in El Campo.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
How many police officers does Civel Campbell have?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Our total police staff is forty four. But that's this
girls on top of it.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
That's the old budget. That's the old budget. Analyst size
of her. She knows how many firefighters.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
No, we don't. We don't have that many. I mean
that commissioned. And obviously some of our positions that that
our civilian positions. That includes our chief he's not a civilian,
but our secretary that works there, as well as our
animal control officers and our school resource officers. So, but
public safeties obviously early on in my career, that's how
(10:37):
we started to continue to be a priority for me
and for the council.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Ramon wants to know if we can ride along with
the dog catcher. We've done a lot of police right along.
We want we want to ride along with the doctor.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
You want to? We could, We could set that up.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
I bet y'all got some little bitty stuff that we
never even thought about doing a ride along on. I
bet y'all got some stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
We probably, I mean, some things come to mind. Yet
probably in a small town. That's that's how that usually works.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
How many firefighters? Which how many? How many uh uh
classified employees you have in the fire department.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It's a volunteer.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Oh volunteer, okay, all right? And yeah, do you do
you allocate anything in your budget to them?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
A little over two hundred thousand dollars a year and
like much. But we're small. There's a whole host of things.
We pay for their medical exams, we pay for their retirement,
we pay for their workers' comp for their chemicals, for
their uniforms. We also last year we boughtom a one
point seven million dollar ladder truck.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
They would vot to approves voters.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Uh yeah, yeah, people like that and they approve things
like that and bondishuances. So uh, that's how we work
with them. I get the privilege of serving on their
pension board. Uh. But their volunteers are ems is in
how we have fourteen We have a total of fourteen
in our enough department. That's paramedics plus a director and
(12:08):
a director.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
So how many how many residents do you have in
the city of El Campo?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
What twelve six hundred and fifty, but I don't think
that counts. I put it closer to thirteen. But our
growth rate is really small.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
That's how it orange was.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Oh okay, I didn't know if you were alluding to
the town or the fruit like this lunchtime. I understand how.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Many total employees of the city overall, including classified police, fire, well,
police EMT and all that.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
One hundred and twenty four.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Oh that's pretty lean.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Thank you. Please tell my residence that no, yeah, we
don't outsource a lot. So of course that number can
look differently unless you can textualize it. It's really hard
to understand how many people you need. You know, what
do we actually do? Meaning you know, we've this budget
(13:10):
cycle has been kind of kind of fun this year,
and one of the statements with out there was, well,
you've added a bunch of positions, but we need to
qualify that. The state of Texas said we have to
have a police officer and every school, so we did that,
and that means adding personnel, right, And we've taken services
that were provided by contractors that decided to sell their
(13:31):
company to another company out of state, and we said
that's not going to work, so we're going to provide
IC and house and so that number has grown quite
a bit over the last eighteen years. But I still
think every decision and every position has to be approved
by counsel, and so we list them all on the
budget document. And like I told you exactly how much
(13:53):
we fail.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Now honestly, why she makes six hundred thousand dollars a year.
She's good. This girl is on top of it.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Do you have kids?
Speaker 2 (14:03):
I have one?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Why do you say like that?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
She said kids, I just have the one. We have
a sixteen year old daughter that's actively applying for college
right now.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
If I were to ask, what's your daughter's name, Tara,
Kara with the c Tara with a tea Tara. T
If I were to ask Tara what her mom does,
how closely could she approximate what you actually do?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Oh, I think she's nail it. I do because she
used to sit in on council meetings because she was interested,
and she's taking ap government, so she kind of she
kind of has figured it out. I went at a
very young age, I kind of explained what city management
versus the policymakers, what they do.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
What did your parents do. What do your parents do?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
My mom? My mom is a teacher or was a teacher.
She's definitely, she's retired. And my father was in project
management construction.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Is he still.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
You know?
Speaker 1 (15:08):
And your mother lives.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Where Richmond and del Web, Oh yeah, she like it.
I loved it there. It's a great community.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah. I hear good things about about that community. I've known.
In fact, I've heard from from folks that live there
that listen to the show. I figured you had some
public service in your family. I got that sense from
your values in your life. Of course, No, I did,
And so I'm not surprised that your mother was a teacher,
father was a veteran. No, I wouldn't have surprised me.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
So if I were to if I were to ask residents,
all kidding aside, if there is something that people would
criticize you about, what would it be? Doesn't mean you're
necessarily wrong for it?
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Is this like the interview question where you say what's
your great weakness and they say yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
When people can't give me the greatest weakness, that's always
what it's like.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
No, there's you know, no, no, no city manager is perfect.
I think, Uh, sometimes our messaging can be better. Uh.
We need to We need to be out there with
our citizens more. We need to be more visible. We
need to do a better job of communicating. I'm on
our local radio, uh every other week trying to get
(16:28):
our message out and uh in the newspaper. But I
think sometimes we get caught up in government and we
we we assume everyone knows what we know and uh,
we're not able to articulate that vision because we were
So I've never worked with the private sector, so uh,
I've only been the public sector my entire life. So
(16:48):
I think we lose sight of how how that looks
for people that are in the private sector. And so
I would say, you know, if there's if there's a
weakness on my side, a couple of things. The first is,
I don't I don't necessarily run the city like a
budget like a business. There there's pros and cons to that,
because I've because of the inherentness of working only in
(17:10):
local government my whull career. But the other side is
we we don't do there there There can be there
can be times when I think we've got in our
head that it has to be a certain way, and uh,
it takes us a while to get things to get
(17:31):
to the other uh, to get to the more business
minded ideas. Maybe I don't know how to word that better.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Courtney sladek is the city manager of the city Ville
Passo More with her com.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Michael Bailey Show.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Did I say El Paso? I'm sorry, Ramon said, I
went to break saying El Paso. I meant El Campo.
It's the same thing you did. El Paso and El Campo.
You can actually say them interchangeably. They're the same town.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah, they're interchangeable. Now, Yes, that's okay because we get
mail from El Paso all the time. Yeah, we really.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
After the city manager of Springfield, Ohio was in the news,
we wanted the city manager of our own And now
Campo has a reputation as being a well run city.
You know, folks, I got to tell you, being the
mayor pro tem of the City of Houston opened my
eyes to something and my nose and my ears to
something that was a screeching sound and a foul smell.
(18:23):
How big city governments run is awful. The amount of fraud,
the amount of waste, the amount of inefficiency, the dereliction
of duty, the people who are overpaid and underperforming, the
number of people who don't show up to work for
long periods of time, the amount of theft in government.
It's a morass of evil. It's horrible, and that's why
(18:47):
nothing can get done. It's why the city services are
so poorly done. And you see good people that sign
up to serve in the police department or the fire
department or public works or any other and you feel
bad for them because they're in a situation that is
like a Kafka movie, a Kofka a book, and it's tragic,
it's sad. But then you see these towns and that's
(19:11):
what they are to me, more a town than a city.
And I say that in a good way. That are
they don't get involved in all that. They don't have
these far flown programs, they don't try to have sister
city relationships, and the mayor is not traveling to on
these supposed, you know, trips that are all junkets, really,
and they don't try to be competitors in New York.
They deliver city services. And as geeky and nerdy as
(19:36):
that may make me seem, I love that. I love
what this woman does. I love the thought of being
really really good at being ethical and efficient and customer
service oriented, even when sometimes the citizens may not appreciate it.
That kind of stuff that thrills me. That's what I
thought government service was going to be. Courtney Slottik is
her name. She is the city manager of either El
(19:59):
Campo or El p Hasso, you take your choice. But
she lives in Wharton, So just think about that when
you sid work with what she lives.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
No, that's that's when I started my career.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Oh, you didn't make six hundred thousand a year back then.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
No.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Yeah, you know. The unfortunate thing is we're going to
end this interview with people thinking you make six hundred
thousand dollars a year and that that will have been
your fault.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I'll take the blame on that line.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
I love your passion for this.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
I really I do, Courtney, because I love you. Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
No, I just think there's this general distrust and disfranchisement
with the government as a whole. And I understand it,
like especially at the federal level and state level, but
so it leaks down naturally to the local level, and
so there's this giant distrust and I well understood, but
(20:55):
because of the way the world works now and social
media and and well even even writing letters the editor,
I think things are misunderstood. And in a small town
you have a chance to sort of address that. And uh,
you don't just have the chance, you have a responsibility
to And so I'm grateful that you recognize what city
(21:20):
management should be and is I think it's a noble profession.
I don't think it's always easy. But at the end
of the day, I think the city managers across the
state Texas and probably across the country, they just want
they just want cities to be livable and provide quality
life with their citizens, because that's what we do.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
I agree with that. I agree with that you have
an elected mayor, presumably.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
I do every two Well, it's complicated. Do you want
me to walk it through that or is that a way? Sure?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
No, I have a little experience, and you can kind
of compare and contrast. I have a friend by the
name of Jimmy pap Us, and he's the mayor of
Hunter's Village Creek Point over in the Villages, and it's
all kidding aside. It's a very very well run community
(22:15):
and he is for the elected, unpaid mayor that has
a city manager. He is very hands on, very passionate,
very committed to good fire service. It's a shared fire
service amongst the villages, a shared police service amongst the villages.
And they're both very efficient, very good water construction safety.
I mean, he is all over it for guy that
(22:37):
makes no money doing this, but he's passionate about it.
And I've met his city manager and he's kind of
a good sport. And it's the way it's supposed to work, right,
the operations guy and the more kind of political face
of the community. And I'm assuming that's probably the way
y'all work.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
That's exactly how we work. But when we vote, we
have four large positions, and I apologize, we have four
district positions and three at large positions and they're elected
every other year. This is getting boring fast, So let
me jump to it. The person.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
I love this sort of stuff. You have no idea.
I think I'm the first person that ever read the
charter of the City of Houston and quoted it at
city council meetings and people thought I was a weirdo.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah, Well, our charter had to change because of this,
the person that gets the most at large votes becomes
the mayor, so they're not on the ballot of the mayor,
but they have to get the most votes to be
the mayor. It's very unusual and that goes back to
something that happened in the eighties when they tried to
redistrict here, but the DOJ denied it. They said it
(23:43):
wouldn't be fair to minority. So city found a work
around to say, the person that gets the most votes
becomes mayor. Now you don't have to go through the
DJ for that clearinghouse, so you know, is when that
you redistrict. It's just I'm sure you're familiar with that process.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yes, yes, I enjoy that sort of stuff. I enjoyed
our budget process. There were people I enjoyed, you know.
I came on to city Council in January of two,
having been elected in oh one, and the zero based
budgeting phase had kind of had kind of the trend
(24:27):
had come and gone. But I love the concept. And
for those of you who don't know anybody's been in
business for a while, particularly budgeting, those zero based budgeting
is a reaction to what creeps the ineptitude the inefficiencies
that creep into the budgeting process, which is, if a
department gets four hundred thousand one year, then the next
(24:48):
year they think they're getting four hundred thousand and they
just fight for an incremental amount and so on. Once
a bad budgetary allocation is made, then the idea, how
do we get rid of it? Well, it's there so
zero based budgetings where you start over and go, we're
not giving you four hundred thousand. Show me how much
you should get because it may only be two hundred,
it might be seven hundred. But let's start over from scratch.
(25:08):
It's a much more painful, deep dig into the facts,
but it's a better way to run things. Courtney Slottick
is our guest. She's the city manager of either El
Paso or El Campo. She makes six hundred thousand dollars
a year and she'll be our guest coming up.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
But everybody knows who this guy is. Come on, man,
mit the Michael Berry, Come on.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Courtney Slottick is our guest. She has graciously agreed to
spend her time in the barrel, and she's a good
sport about it. She's from a college station and she
is apparently a nuts and bolts, x's and o's, blocking
and tackling, get it done, city manager. And this is
why small towns work better than big cities. Now, small
(25:51):
town residents don't believe that. Small town residents will tell
you that there was a leaf on their street that
didn't get picked up for three days the other day,
that's not a bad thing. That's why small towns are
better run than big cities is because the people are
so obsessive about every detail. It's the broken paint theory.
In a big city they go, I'm just glad there's
(26:11):
not a dead body waiting out there for three days.
And that's the difference. It's a lot harder to be
the city manager of a small town like El Paso
slash El Campo than it is the city of Houston.
Is the city of Houston. There's no expectation your doors
can be unlocked as you're driving along by hitting a pothole.
That's so big, children are lost into potholes. I mean,
(26:32):
it's bad. They don't expect anything to be good, But
in a place like this they do. Courtney, what is
your don't give me some bs, you know, pie in
the sky answer, what is your thrill when you go in,
what's a win for you in a day? What's the
thing that you do that you really enjoy doing.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
I love how you set that up, So any answer
I shuld how people will go.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I just like to make a difference.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
No, that's okay, obviously, I mean you wouldn't be doing that.
But why don't I give you an example? Would that
be better if I give you, like a concrete.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Example of course specificity?
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Sure? Okay. So we had a one hundred year old
cast iron water line in the ground underneath Highway seventy one.
For over one hundred years, this thing kept breaking and
we kept patching it breaking, patching, breaking, pat in the
middle of a highway, right, So you can imagine how
fun that is for not just the people working on
(27:37):
the line, but the people trying to traverse. They're trying,
they're just trying to go north and they can't get
past these lines. And we were able to replace that line,
and we abandoned the line in place old cast iron
line put in a new new line. It sounds really weird,
but it feels so good to know that we took
(28:00):
care of something, even though this isn't something our citizen
c They don't really it doesn't really affect, but it
feeds every single costal business on seventy one. I mean
every there's dozens of them. There's probably forty of them,
and that's all set off of that line. And to me,
(28:22):
even if you can't see it, even if a resident
can't appreciate it, this is the work we do.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Ye no, yeah, and it makes a difference even if
you don't get credit. Courtney. There are people out there
right now, men or women, who, if they're honest, they
would say that they derive utility. We don't want to
say joy because it's utility maybe out of before they
go to bed, cleaning, wiping down the countertops and making
(28:50):
sure there are no dishes in the sink. I don't
leave the office every day until my emails are zeroed out.
Ramon laughs about it because I'll say, I need ten
more minutes. What do you do on? Every email has
to be zeroed out, every document has to be removed
from my desk, everything has to be turned off. And
then I as I get to the door, I turn
back and I look back and I make sure everything
(29:11):
is perfect. So I walk into a perfect office when
I go to bed, I go past the sink. I
make sure everything is wiped down there are you know,
little things like that give me joy. I am restoring
order to a chaotic world, and that gives me utility.
What you're doing is providing the infrastructure and the basis
(29:33):
for families and businesses and human beings to thrive. And
that's not always glamorous, but if that gives you joy,
you're wired that way.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yep. Like you, I have the same routines. So yeah,
if you walk by my office, just not a paper
at a place. But maybe that's more telling my personality
than as a city manager.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
It's just nobody that also says that you are well
suited for what you do. You know, there's something to
be said for people. Jim Collins wrote a book called
Good to Great. If you haven't read it, you should.
Ed Young prescribed it for me in early two thousand
and two and I've read it multiple times and I've
told people to read it. And he said that if
(30:22):
a well functional organization needs the right people on the bus,
but the right people need to be in the right seat,
you are clearly on the right bus, the right person
to be on the bus, and in the right seat. Courtney,
do you do internships. I think you'd be a great
person for young folks to trail around because no, No,
(30:45):
here's why. You give me hope that there are good
people in government. And I want young people to see
that because government's not about giving speeches and brochures and
mailers and glossy campaigns. Government is about functioning for the people.
You can't really say no, now, can you? What an
(31:05):
ass you would sound like, Well, that's all nice, Michael,
but no, I don't want some intern trailing around me.
No thanks, No, I mean we have before.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
We're open to it. One thing is they speak at
conferences sometimes and I get people walk up to me
afterwards and we exchange numbers. And I take that extremely seriously. Uh,
there's a young woman in Wharton. They graduate from ut
and in the Bush School, and now she's working for the
city of sugar Land. She and I exchange numbers. Come on,
(31:37):
I'll be your mentor we'll do this. You may need
some hips along the way. I've been doing this. I've
been doing this a while, and so if I can
help you, or inspire you, or or just listen to you,
I'm here because people have done that for me, and
so I know that absolutely we were open to internships.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
I know you listen to the sh so you've heard
me appreciate. But get yourself a mentor. Find somebody you
want to be like and if that's a Courtney Slaught
And by the way, it's not just for women. You
can be a man and have a female mentor. People
tend to find same sex mentors. It naturally occurs, but
(32:18):
doesn't have to be and it doesn't have to be
Courtney Slot. It could be the police chief, or a
pastor or most anything else. Having a mentor has been
a huge part of my success at every step of
the way. And this is the type of person that
you want to you know, under promise and over deliver
(32:40):
and have write your recommendation because you showed up and
worked hard and made a difference and didn't distract her.
It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Courtney.
It really is Courtney slotok, city manager of El Campo,
and that portends good things for El Campo that someone
as buttoned up as you is looking at the little
(33:02):
things so everybody else doesn't have to worry about it.
Thanks for being our guest. Weetheart.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
I appreciate it. Michael
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