John Gower

A rudderless ship: recruiting the next City Manager

Dayton City Manager Rashad Young has a new job. via Rashad Young hired by Greensboro. It’s official. Rashad Young is off to Greensboro NC to be a city manager of a city that is smaller than Dayton, because they draw bigger circles on a map. I’ve often laughed at our definition of Downtown for the Read More

The Nan Whaley way- and, oh yes, complete streets

Today there was a meeting at the Dayton Convention Center to talk about “Complete Streets”- the new urbanist approach to multi-modal transportation infrastructure. Good stuff- with about 80 in attendence. The “keynote” was given by City Planning chief, John Gower who has incredible institutional knowledge of Dayton and its planning history. Some of it pretty Read More

Returning calls isn’t really optional in City Hall.

Memo to employees of the City of Dayton: When a citizen, a taxpayer, a potential citizen or potential taxpayer calls it’s not optional to return the call.(btw- that should cover everyone). Ignoring 5 messages left for you is inexcusable- and should be grounds for termination. Unfortunately, John Gower, head of the department of planning doesn’t Read More