Deb Mohlenhoff named Ithaca’s next chief of staff

Earlier this month, the City of Ithaca announced that Acting Mayor Laura Lewis has appointed Deb Mohlenhoff as the city’s next chief of staff (tinyurl.com/2h2qfszc). Mohlenhoff ended her most recent role as associate vice president of college relations at Tompkins Cortland Community College just this week and will begin her new chief of staff role Jan. 9 of next year.

“I am thrilled to be inviting Deb back to City Hall where her familiarity with city staff and operations will be incredibly valuable as I begin my term as the elected mayor of the city,” Lewis said in the announcement, referencing her latest election win. “Her professional background and expertise will help city staff advance a range of initiatives. In addition, with the passage of the referendum for city manager, we will need someone to assist the city with the transition to a new form of government. Deb’s experience with complex organizational management will be crucial as the city enters this new era.”

This new role will mark Mohlenhoff’s return to city government. For 12 years, beginning during former Mayor Carolyn Peterson’s tenure, Mohlenhoff served as an alderperson for the city’s 5th Ward, and in January of 2014, she was designated as acting mayor by former Mayor Svante Myrick. She said she’s glad to soon be serving under Lewis’s upcoming administration.

“I was really honored to get a call from Laura after she got elected to talk to me about this as a possibility for me,” she said. “I wasn’t necessarily really thinking about it, but … there was a vacancy there, and it was kind of a vacancy that has a little bit of an immediate need. I know there’s been a lot of change at the city. And there’s a lot of retirements, and we have new council members, and they’re dealing with some pretty hefty issues.”

Mohlenhoff has quite the history in the area, having lived in Ithaca for over three decades. She graduated from Ithaca College with a bachelor’s in communications in 1992 and earned her master’s in public administration from Binghamton University in 2005. Her higher education work brought her to Ithaca College and, later, to Tompkins Cortland.

During her time on Common Council, Mohlenhoff established and chaired the Government Performance and Accountability committee and served as chair of the City Administration committee and the city’s budget process. She also led the working groups that both changed the city’s commissions structure and recommended the city manager referendum, the latter of which passed this November.

Mohlenhoff is also the current co-chair of the United Way of Tompkins County Campaign and chair of the Operating Committee for the Special Olympics State Summer Games.

Mohlenhoff said that, in her time as alderperson, she really enjoyed the “nuts and bolts, day-to-day operational things” — experience she expects to use in her upcoming role, especially as it pertains to changes resulting from the addition of a city manager.

“All of the nuts and bolts and the behind-the-scenes pieces that need to be modified in order to change the form of government of the city, you really need someone paying attention to those details,” she said. “And that’s what nerdy government me is super excited to do. I just can’t wait to get in there and help the city transition to this new form of government.”

Her history with the city has also led to a great number of community and government connections, Mohlenhoff added, which will help her in what she described as the “traffic directing” piece of her role.

“We need communication going up, down, left, right, sideways, every way,” she said. “And the person in the role of chief of staff has to be that bridge or that conduit [for] information to go from the legislative body or from the Common Council to the staff, from the staff to the community, from the community to the council. You sort of want to make sure that all of those channels are open and organized and coordinated. And I think, having been on the elected official side and knowing very well what that role is and how that functions, moving over to the other side will only make it easier for me to do that really crucial piece.”

Mohlenhoff said she’s especially looking forward to getting to once again work with staff members who she misses “on a daily basis.”

“Even though the Common Council role that I was in was sort of a part-time, on-top-of-everything-else-I-was-doing role, there are so many amazing people that work for the city, all the way down from DPW to police and fire and the department heads,” she said. “And I just think being able to get back and be supportive of all of the people that work for the city in these various roles is most exciting to me.”

Mohlenhoff said that she expects to be chief of staff for just one year, so she has a lot of work ahead of her. Her first few months will likely be filled with lots of refamiliarization and figuring out the needs of city staff and how best to meet those needs, she said.

Many Ithacans are well aware of the recent series of developments that have created considerable tension in city government, like issues related to the city’s Reimagining Public Safety efforts (see Ithaca Voice’s coverage at tinyurl.com/2n5hgnao) and employment concerns from city staff (see our coverage at tinyurl.com/2eczuk62). These issues will undoubtedly affect Mohlenhoff’s work over the next year.

“Laura, I know she’s come out of the gate with maybe some challenges,” Mohlenhoff said. “And whatever I can do in order to help move through some of these challenges that we’ve been reading about or hearing about, I’m absolutely there to listen to everyone and to do whatever I can in order to move some of these things forward.”

Mohlenhoff further emphasized her intent to ensure city staff members get the recognition they deserve.

“I just think the chief of staff, to me, the important word in my title is ‘staff,’ not ‘chief,’” she said. “I think that being in a role where you can essentially ask everybody that works in the city, ‘How can I help you? What do you need?’ and then doing your best in order to get what is requested, that’s really the crux of what I’m most excited about.”

Looking ahead to who may become the city manager in 2024, Mohlenhoff said that she’s not against throwing her hat in the ring, but “it’s very, very early to tell.”

“I want to make sure that we are as responsible as we can to the voters who overwhelmingly said that city manager was the direction the city needed to go,” she said. “We need to make sure that this change in government is as successful as possible. And transitions are pretty hard, so if I’m the right person [for city manager], I’m the right person.”

For now, Mohlenhoff is just excited for the year ahead.

“As a person who is a resident and a taxpayer — and I invite friends and family to come and visit because it’s because so beautiful — you come to just really love a place so much that, for me, being able to give back in this very tangible, meaningful way to ensure that the government is the best that it can be, it’s really a dream job for me,” she said. “For someone who loves the community so much, this is just the ultimate way to really get that back.”

For more information, email mayor@cityofithaca.org.

Jessica Wickham is the managing editor of Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@VizellaMedia.com.