In a surprising move, City of Cleveland Strategic Planner Tim Mueller announced his resignation from Mayor Jane Campbell's administration last week. He had already been reassigned from his original position as Chief Development Officer, which he started when Campbell took office. It was a bold move to bring in an entrepreneur like Mueller who had started his own tech firm, Vantage One, and sold it. His position signaled that Campbell was interested in moving Cleveland beyond its industrial and manufacturing base, and bringing a more customer-focused approach to city government. Cool Cleveland spoke with Tim Mueller the day of his announcement in this exclusive interview.

Cool Cleveland: We just heard the news that you'll be leaving Mayor Jane Campbell's administration.
Tim Mueller: I’m psyched to get back to the private side.

The unique thing about you being in a major position in the city administration is that you are not a career government employee or politician. Your background is in business. And not just any typical Cleveland business such as manufacturing, but from the technology side. You also brought in Tim Moran who served for over a year as the "tech guru" at City Hall, and he also came from the tech business sector. This appeared to be a great experiment to drive the city into the new economy of the 21st Century. Was the experiment successful? There’s no doubt that the move to bring a couple of guys from the technology sector is an experiment, and that should continue. Neither one of us made a long term commitment. I will send you a list of things that I feel are major accomplishments (see list here). Whether they were promoted well in the paper or not is debatable. I would hope that other people who are still young in their career, would consider doing something like this for a period of time. For the first two years, I took the Mayor on a tour of Termagon or Charlie Stack’s place Flashline and Trevor Jones’ place - the tech stuff going on at the Cleveland Clinic. It allowed her to have a vernacular and an expertise about the exciting things coming out of Cleveland. That’s a big step forward for a Cleveland Mayor. As for [former Mayor Michael] White, we missed the '90s in terms of technology. I only wish we had a little larger technology development fund. I regret that we only got 8 tech companies instead of 20 [to move to Cleveland]. If I knew two and a half years ago what I know now, I would say, absolutely, I would still have done it. Not only for yourself, but we really got some things done.

What about the timing of your leaving? We're rounding the corner of Mayor Campbell's third year, and she will be entering her re-election campaign soon.
I had talked with her about leaving in early 2005, and she wanted me to go at least till early '05. I have real allegiance to the Mayor; she’s had some things going against her. It could be said that during '91 and '92 [former Mayor] Mike White had it tough as well. But at that time, we had a strong Ohio delegation and a Governor who had been a former Cleveland Mayor [Voinovich]; we had hundreds of million of dollars of UDAG [Urban Development Action Grant] money, $32 million per month, now we have only $610,000 at any one time for the revolving loan fund. We've won on big bets like the Old Arcade renovation and the Wyndham Hotel.

One of the unfortunate things about your leaving is that you were an articulate and popular figure at City Hall. I wonder how the Administration will continue to appeal to the business community?
I believe in the power of the universe or fate. I had been looking at the possibility of moving on, and a lot of opportunity to look at equity investments or the CEO role, and I found a great passion stir for this type of opportunity. I thought that this was my sign to go. The other thing, and this is more political, I thought that if I left in early 2005, it would hurt the Mayor more. Now she has time to spread out the responsibilities and make the replacement and put the team together for her re-election. It mitigates the damage.

Is there any political future for you personally?
It’s funny because there’s always rumors and discussions as to who wants to vie for the golden ring, as for Congress, or the County Commission or Mayor, and that isn’t anything that I’m planning on taking any time soon.

“…any time soon” being…
This period of my life; we have young children at home right now, that paired with the demands that are on public officials - I don’t know if I could balance that very well, if that would be good for my family right now. But who knows, maybe when they grow a little older, that might be of interest to me. I have gained so much institutional knowledge having been at the epicenter of all that’s going on. The Mayor has talked about putting me on some boards that would help the city.

We went to the WiFi thing at the airport, and I told her I would give her 6 weeks to wrap things up, and an hour and a half later they had a meeting at the City Hall in the Mayor’s Dining Hall, and I popped in and hit control-8 and I said “As my last duty here, I will make this projector work...” I don’t walk out with any frustrations or anger. This system is 100 years old, it’s not like Mayor Campbell or White or Voinovich invented the system. I walk with my head held really high on this - I wish people would consider it, and I would hope that you would consider public service like this. I think that even though you would break so much glass here, but you would grab hold of some initiatives, and you would get some things done. I would hope that people would look at public service as an option in life.

There’s a couple problems with that. Most business people don’t get invited like the Mayor invited you. It’s hard to be at the center of the storm. The more levers you are able to pull, the more discouraged you get. And the effect on the family is time that you will never get back again.
Everything you've just said is true. This is not a sexy job, it’s not easy to jump from the private side to the public side. By the same token, Hopefully the City will have a different perspective after me and Moran. Hopefully the city will start to call people customers and treat them like customers. That’s one of the perspectives we’ve brought. That’s one of the things we’ve been trying to do.

Interview and photos by Thomas Mulready (:divend:)