To Vick, it's 'passion' – and it goes
with the territory in the Shores

All five of the Grosse Pointes are dealing with hard times, but none are doing it with as much public acrimony as Grosse Pointe Shores. A special election in the spring to recall the mayor and two council members did not succeed and failed to heal the rift that opened over the city's financial difficulties.

And the man in the middle of the battleground is city manager Brian Vick.

Which is not to say that Vick deals only with negativity. He says the feedback he gets from citizens is evenly mixed and that the complaints take up a small percentage of his day. GrossePointeToday.com caught up with the man who seems to get at least two tongue-lashings at every city council meeting and met with him last week. We wanted to know why this Park native, Farms resident, father, former military man and peaceful reader of history novels comes back for more — and how he keeps his cool.

Have you always been in politics?

I'm not in politics actually. I'm an appointed person who stays out of politics ... As an appointed position, I make recommendations to the council and then they play politics.

And sometimes people don't like the recommendations.

You're never going to please everyone, and when you try to, that can send an organization down the wrong path. When I talk about pleasing everyone, I'm just speaking in general terms. The six council members and the mayor, they're the people I work for directly. Obviously we all work for the public but in the direct chain of command, my responsibility is to those seven and those seven set the policy. My responsibility is to carry that policy out. So I'm not a policy setter. Politics more surround the policy setting.

Have you always wanted to be a city manager?

I always wanted to be in public service from the time I was in the military. Got out, went to college, public administration, studied it. Worked for the internal legislative level for a brief stint and went right into city government.

What did you want to do as a kid? You talked about after the military.

I think my mind has always been interested in the public sector, assisting the community. Having grown up in Grosse Pointe, it's a great opportunity to have the perspective of someone who grew up here, a user of the services, and to come back and serve the community.

You don't align yourself with any political party then.

That's correct; my professional code of ethics sees that I don't speak to that and in addition I'm a city clerk, so I have a responsibility to be impartial in addition to my city manager responsibilities.

It seems that you are given a hard time by the council members or public at nearly every turn.

I don't know about that. I mean a hard time is a relative statement.

I mean someone winds up raising their voice at you at least twice a meeting.

People are passionate. The public wants to make sure that their government is responsive and if someone raises their voice at me or is displeased with myself or the council, as you know we just had a recall in this city and that brought out a lot of passion in the community.

Who are the most passionate people?

I think everyone's passionate, everyone's passion comes out in different ways and it's good to have passion for your city. You don't want anyone sleepwalking through this. You don't want the citizens to be sleepwalking, you don't want the council to be sleepwalking and the great thing about Grosse Pointe Shores is that we don't have any of those situations.

You seem to let things roll off your back relatively easily and cool things down a bit, would you say your military service (in the Marines) helped with that?

I think there are some skill sets you learn and hone in all facets of your career, whether you're in college, in the public sector, in the private sector or in the military. Did it help having a drill instructor yell in your face? Some could argue yes, but personally I wouldn't compare the two. I would never compare someone in the public showing dissatisfaction of some sort, in one way or another, to myself or the council, with the military experience.

However, you have to take it in stride, everyone has the opportunity to speak and everyone should have the opportunity to speak, not everyone is ever going to agree 100%, it's just not a reality. However, it's the job of the city council to hear voter comments and follow that through with policies based upon all the info they receive.

So you just happen to be the guy all the feedback falls upon in operations of the city?

The city manager is responsible for the day-to-day operations and whenever something goes on, day to day, it's my responsibility to work through those problems. Let's say we get someone who's unhappy with an ordinance, as we have had at previous meetings. Our job is to enforce ordinances whether it's public safety or the building department, whatever. So we go out and enforce something and a resident may not be happy, for example, that the ordinance is written a certain way. The process is intended for that person to come in and express to council and then it allows the council to look at that ordinance and say whether it makes sense or if there's something they can change.

How does it feel when someone doesn't take your recommendations, do you ever take it personally?

Like I said, I'm as passionate about my job as the council is about their responsibilities and the citizens are about theirs. I work very closely with the day-to-day operations, so sometimes that may be expressed one way or another but ultimately the policy makers are the policy makers and when they set policy it's my job to carry it out. No questions asked. So if you keep that in perspective, you move forward. In the same way that just because I make a recommendation I may get a 7-0 vote, I may get a 4-3 ... and that goes with the territory, that's representative that you're not going to have 100% of the people believing the same thing all the time.

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