EP 40: Know Your Maker (Plus: More of the Best Fictional Mayors)
It's time to meet your maker -- your talented, independent, local creator of tangible goods, like art, clothing, instruments, toys, knick-knacks, tech tools, anything. Your city or town might even have its own, motivated maker community that experts are increasingly calling a missing link in the local economic development strategy. On this episode we hear from four of these experts and dig in to a recent report about this "maker economy." What can your city make of it? Show notes: Report, "Discovering Your City's Maker Economy" - http://nlc.org/resource/discovering-your-citys-maker-economy Background on Etsy - https://www.etsy.com/about?ref=ftr Etsy's Craft Entrepreneurship initiative ("Our mission is to expand access to microbusiness education for underrepresented creative entrepreneurs") - https://www.etsy.com/craftentrepreneurship White House archives, "Nation of Makers" - https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/node/316486 CitiesSpeak, "Exploring Nashville's Small Manufacturing Revolution" - https://citiesspeak.org/2017/12/08/exploring-nashvilles-small-manufacturing-revolution/ Burgermeister Meisterburger bans toys (so, not a fan of toy makers) - https://youtu.be/xn_p8Z8Ltng
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Transcript
On this episode of Municipal Equation.
So cities have a lot of really great reasons to support makers. I think there's a lot of, creative collaboration that's often inspiring for policy makers. Very few communities
scale manufacturing and maker businesses within their community, but they're there. People have these amazing skills that they should be very proud of having. They are this missing piece of the local economic development strategy.
The maker movement and why city governments might wanna pay attention. My name is Ben Brown, and this is Municipal Equation, a podcast about cities and towns and changing times from the North Carolina League of Municipalities. Episode 40. Oh, and at the end, stick around because we got many more submissions to our list, our ongoing list of best fictional mayors. Stick around for that. For sale, a giant pillow shaped like an ear of corn, a back scratcher made out of an alligator foot, a pair of sunglasses made out of skateboard wood, A lamp shaped like a mushroom cloud. Cinnamon flavored toothpicks.
An interesting item that I, recently found out that we sell, or that Etsy sellers have on Etsy, is tiny houses, which is crazy. You can just go and buy a tiny house kit or deliver an entire tiny house. So we're talking about stuff you can find on Etsy.
I looked up some of those tiny homes that you can buy on Etsy. These are those little micro houses you can live in. You've probably heard about them or seen them on HGTV or something. The ones on Etsy ranged in price from $4,500 for a cool 112 square footer to $28,000 for a modernist style home of 220 square feet to $70,000 for a gingerbread looking thing in Washington state that doesn't even list by square footage, just says it was built on the back of a 24 foot trailer. So, yeah, whether you wanna buy a tiny home or a plush toy for $277,378.20, or a lamp made out of a liquor bottle for $30, or a suspender and bow tie set for just 18¢. You may find it on Etsy. It's a global commerce platform for independent makers of tangible items. And I realize this sounds like an advertisement. It's not. We're just building up to something. That voice we just heard a minute ago was that of Elissa Meyer. She's the manager of public policy and research at Etsy, and she's based in Brooklyn, New York. And you might wonder why a site like Etsy needs a public policy department. We do everything from,
And a lot of the policy work, that I'm super passionate about is our local economy and economic development work. Sellers often identify pain points in their business and, they might not think that public policy is, you know, the first route to sell them, but oftentimes it is a public policy concern that they have. Don't worry. Our phone connection gets better. But what Alyssa's department does is sort of builds a bridge between the sellers that Etsy represents
and government to see what kind of shifts in public policy might better enable or position these sellers for success. Etsy right now has just shy of 2,000,000 independent sellers from around the world. Last year, sellers on the site grossed $2,800,000,000 worth of goods. So it's kind of the big portal, so to speak, to the maker movement. And increasingly, as the maker movement in America finds connections to the origins of manufacturing here, particularly in in Rust Belt and southern areas that have been hit hard by the disappearance of big manufacturers. There's been a lot of scholarly talk about how the maker movement is something to pay attention to, like it's a renaissance of the era of invention. Then once you add in the fact that the maker movement also overlaps with the tech sector that so many cities are trying to foster, and with the efforts of so many cities to rebrand themselves as cool creative places to be, and with the focus on local economies and local business, and with the focus on how the instant distribution of the Internet has changed the game on selling power and who gets to be a vendor, which also ties in with government needs, government contracts, and procurement, and how the mantra of buy local appeals to residents, Then you start to get the idea And no, it's not all rounded out by the handmade novelties that I mentioned at the start of this episode The idea is, it could be anything In 2016, the maker movement got a national spotlight from the White House, which announced it would celebrate a national week of making that was in June. From the White House at the time. America has always been a nation of tinkerers, inventors, and entrepreneurs. In recent years, a growing number of Americans have gained access to technologies such as three d printers, laser cutters, easy to use design software, and desktop machine tools. This, in combination with freely available information about how to use, modify, and build upon these technologies and the availability of crowdfunding platforms is enabling more Americans to design and build almost anything. Last month at the National League of Cities City Summit held in Charlotte, NLC unveiled a new report about this, about the maker movement and specifically how it relates to cities and policy and potential for cities. For the record, could you state your name, what you do and where you're based?
Sure. This is Emily Robbins, the principal associate for economic development with the National League of Cities, and I'm based out of Boston, Massachusetts.
So, in this spectrum of definitions, what's the difference between a maker and a manufacturer and, a maker business and a small business? You know, what what pops out?
Sure. That's a great question, and there can certainly be some ambiguity around the term maker. And that's exactly why we decided to create this new report to help further define what we mean by the maker movement. So both NLC and the report coauthors, which are Etsy, Recastity, and the Urban Manufacturing Alliance, wanted to take this one step further by laying out a clear picture of what the maker economy is and how maker businesses can play a big role in strengthening local economies. So in terms of a definition, a maker is someone who creates a tangible item, and a maker entrepreneur is someone who sells these items for a profit, either in a store or online. And generally speaking, the products that Maker Entrepreneurs create can fall under a few different categories. And some of the most common ones are jewelry and baked goods, handmade art prints, clothing, beer, and, you know, furniture, just to name a few. And so if you imagine the folks that you typically see at a farmer's market or a holiday market Sure. Those are your city's makers. And so, you know, maker businesses technically are small businesses, but they're a little bit different than your typical Main Street business in a few different ways. Mhmm. And so the first is that a maker business, they're often very small, very small micro enterprises with maybe one or two employees at most. And the second is that they often work from home, either in a home studio or a home kitchen. And, you know, another, you know, sort of important distinction is that maker entrepreneurs tend to sell their items more often online. Right. Oftentimes on sale you know, online sales platforms like Etsy.
And so your report on the first page, it says, quote, cities have many good reasons to support maker entrepreneurs, end quote. So what are the reasons? And, are there any that might surprise people about how the maker economy is an asset?
Sure. So cities have a lot of really great reasons to support makers. And actually, there's a pretty fascinating statistic from Etsy that found that there are local makers with an online shop in 99.9% of all US counties. So it's pretty fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, you know, it's safe to say that every elected official or city staff are listening to this podcast has at least one maker business in their city. And so they're quite literally everywhere. And another big reason that cities should be supporting their makers is because they can have a really big impact on the local economy. So Etsy's research team has also found that their sellers generated about $2,800,000,000 in sales world worldwide just last year. So there's clearly, you know, really big demand for these types of goods. And at the same time, you know, so many cities are just really moving away from the more traditional economic development approach of luring a big corporation with tax breaks and are instead focusing much more on building up their homegrown local small businesses. Mhmm. And maker entrepreneurs and small scale manufacturers play a a big role in that, and they're a big piece of that pie. And then so some other reasons that we're really sort of exploring, and this may actually be the most important, is the emerging maker economy can play a really big role in making access to entrepreneurship more accessible and inclusive. Uh-huh. And what you know, sort of what we mean by that is the barriers to entry are sometimes, you know, not all the time, but sometimes not as high in terms of the capital you might need to start a maker business. So you may not have to worry necessarily about paying employees. A maker won't need to pay for a studio or kitchen space because they can work from home. And for these reasons, we feel like it's really important for local government to start thinking about maker entrepreneurship as a workforce development strategy in terms of helping more individuals be self employed in these creative maker businesses.
Gotcha. So so that that kinda hits, you know, someone might say, can't we just leave the maker movement? B, can it just flourish on its own? Why does city government have to get involved with the maker movement? I mean, you you've you've mentioned some of the considerations there, but maybe we could reencapsulate some of that right here.
Sure. So it's our perspective that municipal governments should absolutely be involved in supporting their local makers. You know, the maker economy can certainly exist and operate on its own, but when mayors and council members and economic development staff get involved and provide that extra layer of sup of a support system, it's such a value add and helps catalyze the growth of the movement.
Here's Alana Proust with Recast City. That's another one of the coauthors.
So I come from a background in city planning and neighborhood redevelopment that works in housing and transportation for a very long time. And one of the things that I saw through this work is that, as we are investing in neighborhoods, we haven't thought enough about what businesses are going to be there, how those businesses could be owned by people within our community, and employ more people in our community. And small scale manufacturing is a business type. I define small scale manufacturing as businesses that are producing a tangible good that can be replicated and sold. It could be a one person business, making a bottled hot sauce Mhmm. Or it could be a 40 person business in textiles. But they're small. And in in in the case of small businesses, when you're under 40 people, you're actually often referred to as a micro business, even though 40 people might be considered a lot to some of us. And these businesses, that are producing tangible goods, they pay 50 to a 100% more in wages as compared to retailer service jobs. They're owned by people within our communities who aren't gonna take the business to another place for the most part. And because of the size of the businesses and the technology that we have today, these businesses fit within our neighborhoods really well. This is not industrial that needs to be out at the edge of town. This is small scale manufacturing that can be right next to a retail shop or right next to a restaurant or right next to where somebody lives because it's quiet and it's clean, and it's a good neighbor, and it adds a lot of energy to the street to be able to walk by and see some something being creative.
So even though making seems like an old concept, and it is, it's kind of new or renewed in the modern context of economic development.
In many communities have thought about, chasing big businesses to come to town for a long time, and even some communities have been thinking about economic gardening. How do we grow our own businesses from the residents here? And in most cases, people have been thinking about service industry or restaurants and bars and how do we grow those business sectors. Very few communities have thought about small scale manufacturing and maker businesses within their community, but they're there. There's a they are this missing piece of the local economic development strategy that's just out there work doing their own work and not, in most cases, not getting any support from the jurisdiction. Even if there are programs that could support them, they're not getting connected to those. So the first piece is to think of how do you access this part of your business sector that is a missing piece? Because small scale manufacturers can complement the existing ground floor users of different services, different service businesses, and, retail, restaurants and bars that are on the ground floor. The second piece is that these small scale manufacturers can fill storefronts. So in a lot of communities, there might be, empty storefronts still on the main street or in neighborhood centers. And these businesses are great at the storefronts because you have something interesting to look at. It actually can help draw people to that block. It helps it feel safe because there's more eyes on the street, and you're actually bringing jobs back into that neighborhood. We also need to look at how we are showing people within our community that their existing skills have value. So we have a lot of communities that used to have, manufacturing going on, and that's especially true in North Carolina. And people have these amazing skills that they should be very proud of having. And so when we can connect these people to entrepreneurship and business training programs, well, then they can also understand that they can become business owners. And so that's this is true of people with the existing skills from manufacturing that they used to work in. This is also true of returning citizens, who may have a hard time getting a job somewhere else because of their, their history, but might be great at owning their own business and creating their own product that they sell. And and then we also can look at, the wages that these jobs often pay. So as I mentioned, the businesses that are in small scale manufacturing on a national basis, these business these jobs are paying 50 to a 100% more than retail and service jobs. So if we're thinking about how are we truly creating more opportunity for more people, then that's has to be a part of that solution.
Alyssa Meyer from Etsy.
There are quite a bit of examples of, Etsy sellers who have worked phenomenally well with their local governments and municipal organizations to figure out those, the ways that they can help each other. So it's not to say that all of them don't understand makers, because there are ones that do and have been super, super helpful in, growing people's business operations in the way that they want.
What's happened in those cases? What what are some good examples of makers and government working together?
My favorite example, not to play favorites, but, in Knoxville, Tennessee, the Entrepreneurship Center and Etsy sellers got together and wrote a memo to the mayor requesting that she convene the mayor's maker council to advise on those programs. So that's how the Mayor's Maker Council came together. Nice. And now, yeah, they meet and, I think they were supposed to meet every quarter, but now they meet every other month. And they're just basically going through program by program and policy by policy and identifying different ways that the two can work together. So it's a pretty cool, example.
So it's kind of connecting local government with everyday people and kind of thawing out the ice.
Here's Lee Wellington with the Urban Manufacturing Alliance. Interestingly, we just had a conference in Seattle where we were able to elevate a number of local branding platforms across the country. And one of the stories that we were able to tell was the work of Made in Charlottesville. And what's interesting about their, and they're relatively new branding platform. So they're just launching this network of makers and manufacturers in the city. It's run out of the city government. And one of the things that they shared was that when they approached these businesses as the city, it was hard to develop a rapport. Right? Because the city Yeah. Tends to have more of, an enforcement, an enforcement lens. Yeah. Yeah. And and when they built this branding platform within the city to actually network with these businesses, it created a home and frame for them to engage with the city, and connect around a sense of place. And and the beauty of that was that they were not only building a brand that elevated the awareness of these incredible firms in Charlottesville, but they're also then able to connect them to a whole variety of programs that they may have never even engaged with because of their, deep skepticism about working with city government. Right. Yeah. And so it was really interesting to hear them share that very early understanding of how, it changed perceptions, by by having a local brand. I'll also just point out that there are a number of cities that the Urban Manufacturing Alliance is working with now to survey, makers and manufacturers in their communities. And it's not easy work, identifying these firms and understanding, what notions of scale mean to them or what their space needs might be five years from now. But it's valuable because there is so much promise and opportunity in the sector, and the sector is undergoing such a radical shift right now that without this data and without these conversations, communities all across the country are not going to be well positioned to seize on this transformation of the manufacturing sector. So I can't underscore enough the value in taking that first step of having a conversation. But then as those conversations begin to, increase in number, starting to think about building a dataset, around makers and manufacturers in your community. Ilana Proust from Recast City.
Most business owners think that the jurisdiction doesn't care. And by purely by reaching out to the business and asking if you could if an elected official can come visit it and see it or if the economic development staff or can come see it because they just wanna learn about the business. Most businesses are very proud to share what they're doing, and that's exactly what I do when I work in a community. The first thing we do is we develop a list of local small scale manufacturers, and we're actually in a perfect season to identify them because many communities have holiday pop up markets that are going on right now. So who who are those businesses that are owned by people within your community? Do they produce only during the season, or are they actually selling on Etsy or in other on other platforms year round? How do we what do we know about them, and how can we follow-up with them? So, making, an effort to do that one on one outreach is really important. One of the challenges for the maker and manufacturing community is that we don't have any kind of database that we usually use for things in economic development. There is no go to list that exists in most communities of these small scale manufacturers because they're hard to keep track of, and many of them are very new. And so making this effort to go find these businesses, meet with them one on one, understand their needs directly, and not make assumptions about it is a very important place to start.
If I'm a mayor or a city council member or a city manager, how do I make that connection? How do I learn about the makers where I live? On the flip side, if I'm a maker, and I'm looking to connect with my leaders, what's some good advice? We'll handle that first part first. Here's Lee with the Urban Manufacturing Alliance.
I think the first step is looking at the organizations that have traditionally served the manufacturing, sector. Mhmm. So whether that be their manufacturing extension partnership or, folks within an economic development office, that's one way to get at, get at the, who these makers are. Mhmm. Another is to actually look at artists in the community, because artists might be an easy way to to track down who, are the folks that are making things for sale. I will say it's not easy, when it's especially when you're dealing with smaller firms. It it can be challenging to actually identify them. Some of these are home based businesses. And so, it it requires a lot of network building, and relying on local partners, whether that be your traditional economic development partners, or community or social service organizations that might be more on the pulse of who's making things in a neighborhood.
Emily from the National League of Cities. Give them a seat at the table. I would meet them in person. I would have maybe think about establishing a council where you can think about what are some of the needs that they have and barriers they might be facing when it comes to interacting with local government or just support systems they might need overall. Mhmm. But I think if you get them at the table and just really let them know that they're a valuable part of your local economy, I think that is one of the best ways that you can really start. And, you know, other ways too, again, is sort of thinking about ways that, city hall can start to think about purchasing from these folks. So, again, you know, if you're having open office hours in your district, think about having it at one of the smaller local coffee shops instead of one of the bigger chains. Or, you know, try to make sure that you know who some of the local catering businesses are or food truck businesses are Mhmm. That can come and provide food for a meeting that you're having. You know, it's sometimes it's really easy to sort of think about those bigger chains, and it might seem like those are the first point of contact to go to. But, you know, you you not only will be able to get some really delicious food by going to someone who is a local maker. Right. But you can also, you know, introduce yourself, say hello, and get their business card, and then follow-up afterwards and see, just get their story about how they got into business and how you can help support them. And here's Alyssa from Etsy.
And also if, they're Internet savvy, they can go to etsy.com and plug in their, ZIP code and see all of the makers who are actually located in their town, which is something I had a lot of fun with at NLC. I would sit down next to folks who didn't know what Etsy was, and I would open up the app and show them, like, these are all makers who are in your town right now. And you know, when you get home tomorrow, you can go home, and say hi to them or, you know, reach out to them or have, an intern or a policy person, just make that first contact contact, and I'm sure that they'd be happy to hear from them. From the maker perspective, wanting to engage with, the government folks, I feel like, oftentimes people, only go to government when they have a problem or when they run into, a barrier. And that's not always the best way to have the first experience. So, I think, if there is I'm sure there's, things that the city would host or if that mayor did convene that meeting, I would go in there with, you know, open eyes and not, not a book full of complaints, but maybe just hear what they have to say and then, start the relationship from there.
Yeah. I would just underscore that we've heard anecdotally anecdotally that maker entrepreneurs oftentimes don't think of local government as a natural partner, so it really is incumbent on city leaders to make that first move and proactively support their local maker economy. Another thing is I would also caution cities not to assume that you know what people need. I would go out and definitely talk to them. So that's one piece of it. And another piece of this that I think is just an interesting trend to start to be thinking about is there is a huge trend right now of people wanting to buy really unique locally made items. There's just this really interesting opportunity right now, to help meet that demand for locally made products. And I think cities maybe don't realize that that they're such a powerhouse, and they can be such a big part of their economic development strategy.
So let's say that a city has been successful in reaching out to its local makers. They're at a round table. There's a group of makers and a group of city officials. What happens? Here's Alana from Recast City. I would
see a couple of priorities. One is I would want the jurisdiction to share existing programs that could benefit the maker manufacturing community. Mhmm. Because most communities have programs that benefit, startup businesses, small businesses within the community, and many people just don't know about them. So I would want the jurisdiction to share that. I would want the small scale manufacturing business owners to share, what's working well for their businesses, and that might be them each sharing a little bit of their own stories and understanding how they got to where they are, what skills they brought to that. And then I'd also want them to share what are some of the challenges and barriers that they've come up against. Is it about permitting a space? Is it about sales and access to new markets? Have they tried to go do any procurement with the local jurisdictions or any anchor institutions and had any challenges doing that? Mhmm. And out of that, I would wanna see the two, groups of stakeholders really come together to identify some short term actions that they can take together to expand the markets for some of these small scale manufacturers, and to access the programs that are already there and potentially to connect those businesses with the property owners in the community where the the the community or the the elected officials have decided that they'd love to get more energy in that area, more business, more foot traffic.
Is there a lack of eligibility for makers when it comes to the the kind of assistance that a small business or a start up might go for?
It really is dependent on each community.
Mhmm.
Many communities have small business training programs, but they're very oriented towards service businesses and not particularly helpful of, production based businesses. Many communities have tech start up programs now, and that is also not as much as technology is used in all of these production businesses, it's not exactly what these businesses need. So it depended on the programming that's there. There are there's also a different need for businesses that are at the business plan and launch point versus businesses that exist and wanna scale. And so looking at the different kinds of programming within the community that could be available or the partnerships with a university or a community college or even local corporations that could help provide or sponsor that kind of programming.
Right. So earlier, Emily said something that I wanna follow-up on and kind of dig in a little bit more before we wrap up. And that's this piece about equity and inclusion and how the maker movement might help to fill some of that gap because a lot of cities are wrestling with this right now. You know, equal access to success success across all neighborhoods, all communities. So the merge emerging maker economy can play a really big role in making access to entrepreneurship
more accessible and inclusive. Mhmm. And what I mean by that is barriers to entry are, you know, sometimes, you know, not all the, you know, not all the times, but sometimes not as high in terms of what you need to sort of start a business. And ways that we've really seen that play out in cities is, in particular, the city of Boston partners with a local university and its local LISC chapter Mhmm. To help connect makers with low cost microloans through its Impact Lending program. Another really fantastic example is in the city of LA. There's a shared kitchen called La Cocina that provides shared kitchen space and business development services to chefs and bakers from low income backgrounds and helps them ultimately launch a food business.
Oh, that's so cool.
Yeah. It's fantastic. And I think this is really sort of an inflection point for cities, again, to think about putting more resources into supporting these local small maker businesses versus trying to attract some larger corporations to create jobs. And I think that if, you know, if local governments are really being proactive in going out and finding where there is capacity for someone to be a maker, someone may not know that they they can create a business, doing something that they might already do just for fun. I think that's a really valuable thing for cities to really think about. And the fact again that you don't need to have as much financing or employees or, you know, physical products to get started. I think, again, having that threshold be a bit lower is just such a great, thing to really reflect upon when you're thinking about how do we make sure that economic development tools and strategies are really helping everybody in the community.
Alright. So a last word from Alyssa at Etsy. I think there's a lot of, creative collaboration that's often inspiring for policymakers because, you know, with all the trade talk and all the, the current political rhetoric, it's really nice to be able to spy from your local economy and support the people who are actually living and working and investing there. So I think it makes a really great story also for policy makers to be able to actually show up at, you know, a pop up shop or a holiday market and be able to go booth by booth and say, you know, if I'm a mayor and I'm talking to all the people who are in my town creating amazing things right there, I think that's often inspiring for people on both ends.
Again, you can find this topic and supporting examples in the report, Discovering Your City's Maker Economy. You can get it at nlc.0rg or in the show notes to this episode at soundcloud.com/municipalequation. Tons of facts and figures in that report. Here's another one that Alyssa told me. 87% of Etsy sellers are women. For 32% of sellers, being a maker entrepreneur is their full time job. Alright. So we got a bump in the number of submissions to our just because list of best fictional mayors. We're getting a little bit more obscure too, and I love that. So who you got this week? Some of these repeat, but, you know, popular vote. Also wanna point out that a lot of these submissions came from news reporters and editors this time around. So birds of a feather will join in. For instance, Scott Jenkins, editor of the Lexington Dispatch, submits HR Puff and Stuff, the titular and rather unsettling looking mayor of Living Island. That marks a second vote for HR. Bonus points for suggesting a show whose theme song does include a lyric about emergency responder preparedness. He called his rescue racer. He was often made rehearsed and off to shave the boy they'd lose. But who would get there first? Thanks, Scott. And now the boy had washed And I gotta cut in with one more piece of trivia about HR Puffin stuff that I just found on IMDB. There's a bit of controversy involving one of our other mayors, the Crofts, being Marty Croft and Sig Croft, who created HR Puff and Stuff. They sued McDonald's for copyright infringement because mayor McCheese and Big Mac bore a strong resemblance to HR Puff and Stuff. I'm just reading directly off IMDB. They also noted similarities between the living trees and apple pie trees is what it says. According to Mental Floss, this legal battle, it started in 1971 and stretched on until 1977. It kind of went the Croft's way in the end. See, Kate Queram, another longtime reporter, suggests mayor Randall Winston from Spin City. She also says mayor Adam West is such a good one. Mayor West was the popular vote getter a few episodes back. Brooke Kane, who's the TV and media writer at the News and Observer newspaper, suggests mayor Wilkins on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She says hilariously, deliciously evil. Tommy Goldsmith of Indie Week suggests Mayor Pike of Mayberry, North Carolina, of course, from the Andy Griffith show. He also puts forth the mayor of Casterbridge. It's the novel by Thomas Hardy. Lauren Horsch of the insider says, I don't think Stars Hollow actually had a mayor, or it did so briefly. But I always love the town hall meetings and Gilmore Girls because of how Taylor Deuce ran them. Thank you, Lauren. Will Doran suggests the mayor from Portlandia. It's mayor Sam Adams played by Kyle MacLachlan. Will says, I love that he's a trust fund kid supported by his parents and plays in a reggae band, just like most of his constituents. K. I've got a few more. Jason Tyson suggests Mayor Quimby from the Simpsons and Goldie Wilson from Back to the Future. Definitely two popular vote getters from past episodes. Jonathan Owens suggests Mayor McCheese. Jay Reilly says Ben Wyatt, who was a popular one. That's Adam Scott's character from Parks and Rec. You can't get away from his past as a mayor who financially sunk a town by pursuing a winter sports complex. Eric Lamb also suggests, Mayor West from Family Guy and Mayor Walt Gunderson from Parks and Rec, as well as the mayor of Townsville from Powerpuff Girls. He adds, but seriously, it's pretty hard to top mayor McCheese. Skyler Croom says Bruce Wayne was the mayor of Gotham for a week, so I'm a say Batman. Thank you, Skyler. Dallas Thomas says not a favorite, but Tommy Carchetti was a solid character. It's, of course, mayor Carchetti from The Wire. See who else? Nick Smith says vote early, vote off, and vote Quimby. Of course, again, Mayor Quimby from The Simpsons. Gordon Anderson says Salvor Hardin, of course, from the Isaac Asimov novel foundation. I I don't know why I said of course. The Isaac Asimov Wiki says, South Ward Hardin was one of the greatest mayors ever to rule Terminus. He was well known for his masterful manipulation of foreign affairs and long time record as five terms as mayor. Harden is also well known for his many sayings, his favorite being, quote, violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, end quote. That's pretty hard to beat, Gordy. And I think that's all of them except for one that comes internally from my boss, Scott Mooneyham at the League of Municipalities. He submits Burger Meister Meister Burger, which is appropriate for this time of year. Burger Meister Meister Burger. I'm just gonna read straight off the, Christmas specials Wiki. He's the central villain in the Rankin and Bass special Santa Claus is Coming to Town.
Murder Meister Meister
Burger. He's the grouchy, fun loathing mayor and essential dictator of Sombertown, a mountainous Germanic town located near Tantek Ringle's home. He hates toys. And after he trips on a toy duck while walking out of city hall
Yeah. As I suspected, you've broken your fry bone. Oh. What caused me to trap, Grimsley? This, sir. Well, a toy? As I suspected, I hate toys. And toys hate me.
Either they are going or I am going. He passes a law declaring toys illegal, immoral, unlawful, and anyone found with a toy in his possession will be placed under arrest and thrown in the dungeon. And says this makes the children of Somber Town even more miserable than ever and are forced to do chores instead of playing. And then Kris Kringle steps in and turns things around. The wiki says Burger Meister Meister Burger is one of the few Rankin Bass holiday special villains not to be redeemed, and one of the even fewer not to receive any comeuppance either. And in parentheses, it says, other than quietly dying off screen. Thank you, Scott. Appreciate all these submissions. Remember, we started this list based on a conversation I had with somebody in municipal government about what fictional mayor would make a good Halloween costume. But now we're just keeping the list going just because. So keep them coming. Keep getting obscure or not. Tweet them to me at muni equation. That's at m u n I equation. That's the handle. You You can also reach me by email, bbrown@nclm.org. Follow us on Instagram. Subscribe on iTunes. All the past episodes are at soundcloud.com/municipalequation. This podcast is made possible by the North Carolina League of Municipalities online at nclm.0rg. And over the holidays ahead, I'm not sure exactly what our publication schedule is going to be like. We'll just kind of play it by ear, keep you posted online. But as always, reach out if you got any ideas, any comments, or anything like that. Take out your smartphone, record a voice memo, send that to me. I'll play it on the show. We'll talk to you soon. This is Ben Brown.
Them down. Wash the face of every clown, each bouncing ball deflated. No. I don't want to debate it.
