EP 44: Chief Storyteller
There's a lot of exploration on part of local government for better community engagement. With such a diversity of communication and preference out there, it seems pretty complex. But what if it isn't? What if the simplest idea -- even one that hasn't been tried before -- is the key? On this episode we check out Detroit, Mich., and its novel creation of a "chief storyteller" who has editorial autonomy to tell otherwise overlooked stories from within the city and its neighborhoods, on behalf of its government. And then we check in with the City of Salisbury, N.C., to learn about its award-winning answer to feedback from residents who said the city's government staff was disconnected from the people. This episode has ideas. Aaron Foley - https://aaronkfoley.com/about/ The Neighborhoods - http://www.theneighborhoods.org Aaron Foley on GovLove - http://elgl.org/2018/01/12/podcast-detroits-chief-storyteller-aaron-foley/ Southern City magazine issue with the Salisbury initiative - https://www.nclm.org/resourcelibrary/Shared%20Documents/Southern%20City/NovDec2017.pdf
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Transcript
On this episode of Municipal Equation. And a lot of people were raising their hands, speaking out at meetings, saying things like, I feel like I'm being ignored. I feel like our neighborhood is being ignored. I feel like there's a lot of good people here, but our stories are not being told. And so we just kinda wonder what more can we do to actually reach the folks where they live,
literally. They will answer the door when they see the firefighters, when they look through their peephole or blind.
New ways that local governments are reaching people. People who haven't felt so connected. One is very in your face, and the other by way of a staffing position that, by all accounts hasn't been tried before. My name is Ben Brown, and this is Municipal Equation, a podcast about cities and towns in the face of change from the North Carolina League of Municipalities, episode 44. Is there a wild, predatorial cat on the loose in Salisbury? I'm talking about Salisbury, North Carolina, and I'm not referring to the fact that it's home to the headquarters of the Food Lion grocery chain. Sorry. It's a really stupid joke. I'm talking about a piece of information
that a few town employees picked up a while back in conversation with a resident. He told us the house across the street, and he said it was vacant, but it has 15 pit bulls and a bobcat in there. And that he has A bobcat. And a bobcat. And he said he has he knows it's a bobcat because he came home one day, and the bobcat was loose and was on his porch, and he had to shoo it away.
Look, who who knows? Of course, when a city gets word about a bobcat in a residential area and 15 pit bulls shacked up together, the appropriate city department probably needs to get out there and at least have a look. And before we spiral out, I'm not gonna lend any credence to reports of a bobcat on the loose in the Salisbury city limits. But later in the show, I do wanna highlight what led to that conversation, which is a really cool thing that the city's doing to have a new conversation with the populace. But first, let's talk about Detroit, Michigan, where you'll find a local government staff position that I had never heard of before. My name is Aaron Foley. I live in Detroit, and I am the chief storyteller here at the city of Detroit government. Yeah. I'd never heard of a position called storyteller, particularly not chief storyteller
in government. What I do is I do what a journalist does. I can't call myself a journalist, but we write, we report, we go out and find interesting stories from across across the whole city of Detroit, be it, small businesses or just interesting people, churches and nonprofits and things like that. And we also try to humanize some of the initiatives coming out of the city, as far as some of the, things we're doing to fight crime, some some of the things we're doing to grow our, working population, things like
that. And they posted to a totally modern and well put together website, theneighborhoods.org. The website is called The Neighborhoods. With auto playing music to set the tone and a gallery of articles and other kinds of content that altogether do not feel like they're coming from a government. This feels purely like a third party media company writing articles and making videos about, you know, life and culture and things to do in Detroit. Like for Valentine's Day, they were posting stories about Detroit couples and how they met and fell in love. They actually posted a lot of these love stories. And here's some more headlines on the site right now. Detroit goes supernatural in new comic about black female journalists. And Detroit is not getting Amazon HQ two, and that's fine. And And where in Detroit to get your Wakanda fit for Black Panther and beyond. Six things to do in Detroit this weekend. A single Detroit girl's guide to Valentine's Day. I mean, this doesn't sound like the kind of stuff you find from, say, a government communications office, or even from governments that are fairly casual and progressive with their social media strategy. This is more like, I don't know, like BuzzFeed or Upworthy or other viral news and video websites that report on real stuff but have a personality. And when I say like BuzzFeed, I mean that in the best possible way. There's also a video series on the neighborhoods called Storytellers where they interviewed Detroiters about, you know, just something from the local landscape or about a time in their life. So I remember I was they had me as the me and this other dude as a decoy,
meaning as to distract the, distract the cashier, like, talking to him, you know, like, some stupid stupid questions like, you know, can I get a car to activate this phone? Something stupid while other people will be in the back stealing whatever they can from the store, and then we'll flip switch back and then I'll steal whatever I can too. Especially still a couple of Gatorades because we're about to go try out for the basketball.
So we this was going on. Really, really well produced content that feels very disjointed from the standard mill of communications coming out of the city hall. So I caught up with Aaron Foley to talk about why chief storyteller.
It's sort of too evolving into a kind of a marketing role. I find myself more and more helping some of the other departments here in the city, whether it's our planning department or our housing department, helping them advance some of their message messages. But truly, the heart of what I do is finding new ways to educate Detroiters about Detroit. I mean, we wanted a brand that sort of encompassed, you know, what it meant to live and work in those neighborhoods.
And you said you can't call yourself a journalist, but you do have a journalism background. Right?
I do. I got my J. School degree. I worked in, you know, newspapers and and magazines for a long time. But, you know, it got when when municipalities hire journalists, they, relinquished the title. I real I, you know, I relinquished mine, and, that's that's fine with me. But the day to day of what I do, you know, interview sources, monitor website traffic, produce compelling copy, and things like that, it it's very much in line with what a journalist does. I just can't use that title. So when I was talking with my my chief of staff who I report to about what to call this whole thing, I said, well, if I'm telling stories, then why not just make me the storyteller? I saw a couple of, like, Microsoft and I believe, like, Hewlett Packard. A couple of tech companies were embracing that term, but I hadn't seen a government with that term before. So I said, okay. Maybe we can apply some of what some of that terminology from the tech world and bring it over here.
So whose idea was it to create a a chief storyteller position at the city of Detroit? And, you know, how'd you become aware of it? Just just kinda walk us through how you got here.
It was the mayor's idea. So our mayor, prior to becoming mayor, he was, chief executive at the Detroit Medical Center, the hospital one of the hospital chains here. And one of the things he did was he, enabled the marketing team to to really experiment a little bit with marketing beyond, you know, creating billboards and and and newspaper ads and stuff like that. He, hired a video team to, this is when he was at the hospital. He hired a video team to kinda create some short videos about behind the scenes during surgeries and behind the scenes doing all some of these other hospital operations. And it be it it got a lot of attention, in the medical world because it really it really showed what, you know, put put a human face on some of these, procedures that people do in the hospitals. And Yeah. It got a lot of attention for their marketing department. So when he became mayor, one of the things that he was frustrated with and that I was frustrated with and a lot of Detroiters were frustrated with, was that when you look at, a lot of media coverage about Detroit, it tends to focus a lot on what's going on downtown. And Detroit is a 140 square miles downtown, and some of its surrounding areas only encompass about 7.2 miles, square miles. And a lot of people were raising their hands, speaking out at meetings, saying things like, I feel like I'm being ignored. I feel like our neighborhood is being ignored. I feel like there's a lot of good people here, but our stories are not being told. Right. So he decided to create a platform where exactly those kinds of stories could be told. So I had the same frustration in my work as a journalist. I always found it difficult to to just reread about stories about small businesses on the East Side Of Detroit, small businesses on the West Side Of Detroit. A lot of journalists tend to favor the big things, the new things, the fresh things. Mhmm. And as someone who is from Detroit and and has lived here all my life, it always frustrated me that I tried I tried my best in the coverage I did to kind of spotlight these other businesses, but, it seemed like nobody else was doing it. Yeah. So it it I I've been a big media critic and I was trying to do all everything I could, and then the mayor gave me a call and said, well, what if you were doing what you were doing, you know, as a journalist, but do it for us here at the city? And, you know, you can weigh in on, city initiatives. You can sit in on cabinet meetings. You can, you know, be be a trusted member of the staff, and it kind of blew me away. Like I said earlier, I'm from Detroit. Right? And for a lot of us growing up in Detroit, one of the greatest honors you can have is serving the people of Detroit. So Mhmm. I, you know, I sat and thought about it for a long time. It's a very like I said, it's a new position, so I'm I'm very much a canary in in the coal mine here, and that played a big part of my decision. I wasn't sure if I wanted to do this. But once I thought it through and looked and I saw all the resources that were available to me here, I was like, okay. I'm gonna give this a try. You know. So here I am. It's been a year almost.
So Aaron and his team are going for all the deep and symbolic or emblematic or challenging stories they can find in the neighborhoods of Detroit, covering, you know, personal narratives, lifestyle issues, economic stuff, inclusion, small business, not necessarily in a cheerleading way, but definitely to tell the story, upbeat or emotionally difficult.
For example, a story they did about a woman who was a victim of domestic violence. Long story short, she had a very serious issue with her boyfriend, and she bought a house for, like, $2,500, which you can do in Detroit. And at first, she wanted to fix up the house with her boyfriend. That was the plan while they were still together. But she realized that fixing this house and repairing it up was kind of her salvation and and kept her grounded, while she ended this relationship. So she watched all these YouTube videos about putting up plaster and stuff like that, and she's telling us this. And after she fixed up the house, and it's gorgeous, by herself, and she's, like, 23 in in college. And after that story was was put out, she got all these invites to speak at women's groups. And now she's very much an advocate, you know, for domestic survivors. So Nice. That when when stories like that, you know, we the stories about our, like, Bangladeshi population that is growing in Detroit. We do a lot of videos about these young up and coming artists. We're always looking for, okay, what story can we tell and and what do we hope to get to for people to get out of it, which is very much what we were what I was doing as a journalist and what a lot of journalists do is, you know, we we don't wanna write just to write. We want someone to be touched by this and to be impacted by it. And it's all it it all goes back to that goal of Detroiters learning more about Detroit.
Yeah. And some of it, you know, even though it is sort of, under the auspices of city government, it does still kinda have the feel of of third party journalism from, you know, what I've seen, what I've read, from what you're doing with the neighborhoods. And I guess the way I think about it, you know, being a storyteller, no one's gonna buy it from someone who doesn't have a connection to the story they're telling. I mean, there's gotta be a sense of passion behind the story for it to be effective and believable. And, you know, the stuff I've I've I've seen and read from you, it's got a real sense of honesty to it and and frankness, and that that's obviously important for the credibility of your position. It's very real. You know, there's enthusiasm, there's frustration, anger, criticism, humor, motivation. But it's not veiled or dressed up or made nice. It's real. And, you know, for example, you know, there's the PC wrote about the, Amazon HQ two bid in Detroit not making the cut. And, I mean, did did the city basically kinda give you editorial autonomy?
Yeah. Like, I so with any story, like, I don't have to go, like, knock on the mayor's door or, like, send him an email and say, like, hey. Can you o okay this? I totally freestyle that Amazon piece because that's what that's what the feeling was. Yeah. You know? Like, you know, if you look at the responses from other cities, you know, the it was always the official line. Like, oh, we're disappointed. We'll try again next year. Mhmm. Or, you know, not next year. But, but, but I really I really tried to capture what people were feeling. Like, okay. Amazon is not gonna choose Detroit, but Detroit is not going anywhere. We're gonna keep moving forward. And, you know, I was a little bit honest about it. I was I was very frustrated with, I had a line in there about I was tired about reading about, like, everybody's face based status about mass transit because I've Mhmm. We've been talking about our issues with mass transit for years now, and I I we all get it. We get it, you know, whether I work for, you know, the mayor or not. But, yeah, I mean, that's that that is very important. I'm glad you brought that up because a lot of my team is from Detroit. They're all from here, actually. Yeah. So and they all have a very emotional connection to our neighborhoods, to the people that they cover. And I think that's important because knowing your subject gives you, you know, gives you credibility and gives you not just credibility, but just ability, period, to connect with them and vibe with them and and draw out similar experiences that they might might have had, in Detroit because these are Detroiters talking to Detroiters. Mhmm.
You know? And and I've been to Detroit a couple times. I mean, it's it's been awesome each time. There's a cool scene and, you know, obviously, a lot of, you know, history in the music scene there. But there's also this national impression of Detroit as sort of this symbol of, you know, economic hardship and industrial decline and urban blight and all that. I mean, did any of that factor into the creation of your position in any way? I know it's Detroiters talking to Detroiters, but is there anything to to make an outside impression, about Detroit?
I I mean, I would part yeah. Part of the decision to take the the job was I I still know that a lot of people on the outside looking in have this perception of Detroit that is, you know, the Packer plant and the abandoned train station light light thing in light and things like that. And even before I took this job, I was always campaigning against that. I always said, we have this, but don't ignore this. You know? You you, have so many different restaurants to check out. You have so many different, you know, neighborhoods to check out. And I don't don't wanna sound too much like the convention and visitors bureau, but that's essentially what I was doing before this job is trying to point people in the right direction. I'm like, okay. If you go past that abandoned building, you have a whole neighborhood here that exists, and you have people that are existing here. And they we all get frustrated when people try to boil us down to, like, you know, a handful of things because Detroit is big. It's very complicated. It's very complex. Mhmm. It's very diverse, And there's no one one or two narratives that that really define us. There's a lot of different things.
So Aaron and his team of writers, videographers, and photographer produce top shelf stuff with nice equipment and resources. And I guess a quick reaction might be, isn't this a little touchy feely for tax dollars to be paying for? Well, hold on. A key point of this is, how it's all funded. So every municipality,
probably has some PEG funding coming in. So PEG funding. PEG is short for public educational and governmental access, you know, like government access TV. So there's a revenue source specifically for that. It's not property tax dollars or anything like that. Yeah. And that's how this whole department is funded. So we've always had a media department, and there's, like, twenty twenty or 30 of us. I don't have a head count in front of me. As long as we had a media department, it's always been packed funded by our cable and Internet providers. And there was, a lot of funding that was not being used, and that's how I ended up on board is getting approval. You know, we had to get you know, here's here's the walking stuff. We had to get budget approval, and the the attorneys had to look at it, and city council had to approve it. Yeah. But, that's how I ended up here, and we used some of that additional funding to that's that's still coming in to bring on the rest of the team. It's typically, PEG funding is used for cable programming and and what what I don't know if any cities out there have, like, a radio station or anything like that. But being that, you know, this is public, educational, and governmental, we decided, okay. We we are already using this funding for social media. We're already using this funding for broadcast. Why are we not using this money towards the Internet? So everything here is hosted by the city of Detroit. You know, we didn't get, like, a WordPress or anything like that. Mhmm. Everything is tied to the city in some way, and we do have to abide by that educational piece about it. But this is how we're doing it. So Alright. So looking at the neighborhoods right now, there are plenty of pieces.
And by the way, the website does have a city of Detroit badge on it at the bottom. And there are links to the city clerk's office, the mayor's office, city council members, different city departments. That's all on the neighborhoods.org. And you'll definitely find a lot of content about the city, but it's not just sort of the dry press release stuff. You know, there's one headline, Inside the Real Time Crime Center, Detroit police department's 24 monitoring station. So it sort of takes you inside the Detroit police department to look at some of the tech that they have going on. And there are stories about how the city of Detroit has opened warming centers that have helped Detroiters in the, the brutally cold winter months. There's something about the city health department holding pop up hepatitis a vaccination clinics. Then there's something about the Detroit public works department and how they've, you know, really kinda put it in to get rid of, the the snow and ice from the roadways, you know, stuff like that. So So there's definitely a city component, an educational component. But then, you know, you'll also have the the the business features and even one headline here, the unsexy story of opening a sex shop in Detroit. So again, not the traditional government communication. And and thinking back to the piece about creative autonomy or editorial autonomy, a city manager or a city council person or just some somebody in in the supervisory of local government might be a little bit nervous about granting somebody that kind of, power, so to speak, when it comes to communicating and and messaging from the city. What advice would you have if there's any, timidness or hesitancy on on part of local government to to do the kind of thing that the city of of of Detroit's done with you?
Part of why I sort of have the autonomy that I do is is because I think the mayor and I think very clearly about what his vision is for the city, what the administration's vision is for the city, and how I sort of play into that because I I I imagine some of the same things. So having someone that is very closely aligned with the mission of the city, or town or what have you, is is crucial because, you know, if you have someone that's not as familiar with with, with the city or if you have someone that's not familiar with city government, I think that's also a thing that's also keys is knowing how your government works. Mhmm. But, if you have someone that sort of shares that same vision, then there won't be as many cross wires or or or toes stepped on or anything like that because you're everyone is on the same page. That's one of the things that I credit, this administration with is that there's, someone someone, put it very, succinctly, there are no sharp elbows here. Mhmm. You know? Everybody's working towards the same goal, which is, improving life and and public service for our citizens.
So do you see it and I I I'm kinda nervous about asking this question, but, I mean, is there any sort of political worry with the position, being aligned with, the the sort of vision of, the person in power?
When when I first got the job last year, we were in the middle of an election year. Yeah. And there are a couple of stories out there about how I I and, you know, some of my other colleagues were hired simply to kind of, you know, give an extra boost to, the mayor during the during the election season. Mhmm. And I kept having to say over and over again. You know? I I have been talking about, I've been talking with the administration about coming on board way prior to, the election announcement. Of course, nobody bought it, but what what can you do with that? But, the the feeling was, at the time, was like, oh, he's just gonna jump on board for the election, to help him win, and that's it. Well, the election is, you know, five months in the rearview, and, here here I am still. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, there's always that you know, this is something I'm very much learning to deal with, and it's not for the squeamish. It's not for the faint of heart jumping into this world of politics. Now one thing I do appreciate about my job is that I I sort of leave politics upstairs. I leave it, like, on the Eleventh Floor where where the mayor sits, and I and me and my team and the rest of us here in media services, we are the creative minds. We're always out there like, okay. What what what's what's happening in Detroit today that we can talk about and that only we can talk about? Yeah. There's never really a political angle to what we do. There's no political angle in talking about a small business, in my opinion. There's no political angle about, you know, taste testing at a restaurant or anything like that. We just wanna, like, rile up some civic pride, like, outside the political arena, but inspire some civic pride, among among residents. And, you know, that's something all and I think all Detroiters should be doing.
So, a year into this position, how are you doing on that goal of, kinda, like, boosting civic pride and kinda gluing people together?
There's always you know, I I look at our traffic numbers. Right? And we're pulling about 30,000 views a month, which is far more than, like, the water department's website. Or you know, we're we're doing better than water and sewers and and literally any other department in the city. But, you know, there's how many people live in Detroit? 700,000 people. We I mean, I'm always looking at our numbers, and I'm like, okay. How do we improve our numbers? So we did a lot of, the only promotion we've done up until this point was through word-of-mouth and social media and me going to community meetings and me leaning on our city council people and our district managers and so on and so forth to put the word out. But we're gonna be looking at doing some more full scale advertising as far as putting some messages in our buses and maybe some messages in our water bills. One thing that we're actually working on right now is a quarterly print publication. And once again, we're probably gonna have to you we're using, our PEC funding for this, but Mhmm. Doing a quarterly print print publication because one thing about this trait is that we have a significant amount of residents who do not use the Internet at all. Right. Yeah. They they also have, very basic cell phones. So they have cell phones with no data, which means they cannot, browse the Internet. So we need to figure out a way to I mean, this is always part of the plan, but we have to communicate with those residents as well. And there's already a number of newsletters that come out from various departments, health department, water department, police commit commissioners, city council, things like that. But looking at doing an actual publication, with with with stories, with, information and and things outside of your typical, like, call this number for more information. That that'll be very exciting to do, and I hope that, you know, in addition to all the other things I'd like to do, as far as attaching our, the work that we do to some of the other departments and whatnot, I think that'll give us the boost that I'm looking for.
So Aaron Foley is doing it. He's got a government position, and he's using it to lift the identity of the city. Not just that, he's humanizing local government. He's putting an authentic voice on it, which is vital to communities that have spoken out and said they don't feel like they've been very well involved in it, ignored. So even if this kind of position is fairly experimental and new in the public sector,
Aaron sees it as pretty essential. Absolutely. You know, we are local local as all the time. I'm always looking for the up and comers. I'm always looking for who's next because I like to be the first to, like, break someone, the first to talk about someone. Yeah. And that's I feel like that's what a government should be doing, is encouraging its own citizens. You know? We I mean, every government, like, works to find jobs and works to, you know, do all these other things, but this is, to me, a very unique way in supporting our own.
Right. So back in 2016, the city of Salisbury, North Carolina asked residents for feedback in a series of community conversations. That was the formal name for it, community conversations. And city staffers got some honest answers. A number of locals told the city straight up that city staffers didn't really know their residents, just a disconnection, a knowledge gap between city hall and the people. And from one angle, someone from city government might have said, hey. That's not our fault. We advertise our meetings. They're they're open to everyone. Democracy is about participation. And if you don't participate, that's on you. I mean, hypothetically, someone could have argued that. But Linda McElroy, who's in charge of the city's communications,
knew that wasn't the right attitude. And so we just kinda wonder what more can we do to actually reach the folks where they live Mhmm. Literally.
So it's kind of funny how old fashioned innovation can actually be. I mean, this wasn't about creating some public engagement smartphone app. This wasn't about doing some sort of fun day thing at city hall where everybody's invited to to throw the ball at the target and dunk the fire chief in a barrel of water. I mean, all that stuff's fine and totally supported. But Linda and her team went way more simple, way more direct, no frills, by just going directly into the neighborhoods of Salisbury on foot and talking, asking people, you know, what do you need? Any problems with your services? Is there anything we can do to fix something for you right now? If you've got a bigger problem, you know, how about we just take down your name and promise to follow-up with you on a deadline?
Just that simple and direct. They started doing it every Friday. And the reason we chose Friday was we were thinking, well, what day of the week would work best to get out of the office for an hour and a half? And so I don't know about the folks in this room, but, typically, on Friday at about 03:00, I really start to zone out. Right. Yeah. Because this is an excellent opportunity for us to kinda wake up and perk up on a Friday. So we decided we would do it on Fridays at 03:00.
So they go knocking on doors. How does it all play out once you get to the door? So we have maybe, what, 10 to 12 folks in our group. We try to split into two,
and make sure that those group two groups are diverse. We have a few introverts, and then we have some extroverts. So usually, the extrovert is the one who actually knocks on the door, and begins the engagement. What we have found is, and we typically have three firefighters with us, they will answer the door when they see the firefighters when they look through their peephole or blinds. But if they don't, they typically won't open the door. But we've had a lot of success with people who will answer the door, and we actually start off with hello. We're with the city of Salisbury because we don't want them to think that we are, soliciting Mhmm. Trying to sell them anything or asking them to hear, you know, a spiel. We're with the city of Salisbury. We are getting out of our offices to come and talk to our residents and hear their concerns or issues. And so then we ask them if they have any. That's really how we start the conversation and the dialogue.
And so someone's assigned to write this stuff down or take notes on their smartphone. They definitely document what they hear. And if someone wants to be left alone, fair enough, they leave them alone. But when they document a concern, they get that person's info and they route that concern to the right place, like the right government department, just to see if they can resolve the problem or at least speak to the resident to get more information about it. And they try to get some sort of follow-up accomplished by the next week. They also mix up the walking group, you know, with people from different departments just to get some diversity and add some dimension to it. But okay, so the bobcat or potential bobcat. That story came out of one of these neighborhood walks involving a rare instance where they actually went inside a residence, which they typically don't do. But the guy seemed okay. Here's Claire Carriker with the city of Salisbury. Just a bobcat. Because he came home one day, and the bobcat was loose and was on his porch,
and he had to shoo it away. But he said the house across the street I checked they wouldn't let me go peek in because it was I really wanted to see if there were some but the girl was like, no. Yeah. Keep going. But he said, yeah. There's 15 pit bulls and a bobcat. And I think I think when we did a follow-up we kinda did a follow-up on that. Someone told us oh, he also said they water was taken from the house and some other stuff. But I do think that they sorted out the situation, with our code enforcement because we told them about that house. And I think when we followed back up, they said that no one was in the house. And I don't believe they saw the pit bulls or bobcat, but
they could have been moved somewhere else. So the bobcat and the pitbulls could have been moved somewhere else. So the trail kind of dies there, but that's not the most important part anyway. It's the fact that citizen engagement doesn't necessarily have to be this tech solution. Doesn't have to be an app. Doesn't have to be overthought really at all. City of Salisbury figured out that they just needed to get on their feet and go into neighborhoods and see if they could maybe solve the individual nuanced problems that people were having. But But everybody I interviewed with the city of Salisbury said the same thing when I asked what was the number one thing you hear? And roundly, unanimously, it was, I think this is really cool that the city is doing this. Just recently, it won the award of excellence from the Public Relations Society of America's Charlotte chapter. The November issue of Southern City magazine has more details about this program. You can read that for free at nclm.org/southerncity. You can find past episodes of Municipal Equation at nclm.org/municipalequation. NCLM stands for North Carolina League of Municipalities, which brings you this podcast every other week. I'll have links to the work of Aaron Foley and the neighborhoods in the show notes to this episode at soundcloud.com/municipalequation. You can also hear a great talk, a lengthy interview with Aaron Foley on the Gov Love podcast from ELGL. That was just recently. I'll have that in the show notes as well. I was jealous Gov Love got him in line first, but but no, really, it is a great talk between Aaron and Kent Wyatt. Love the link at soundcloud.com/municipalequation. You can also go to elgl.org/govlov to find that, g0vl0ve. If you have any feedback or other ideas about community engagement or reaching out to people where they live, contact me, bbrown@nclm.org, or tweet to me. The handle is at muni equation. That's at m u n I equation. Thanks so much for listening. Feel free to suggest topics that we should cover here. Keep in touch anyway. Talk to you soon. This has Ben Brown.
