Mr Mayor!

If I run for mayor of Greensboro, I know the kind of mayor I want to be.

I don’t want City Hall to be a place where a handful of people sit around telling everybody else what Greensboro needs.

I want to open the doors.

I want to hear from the 22-year-old trying to start a business and the 72-year-old who’s lived on the same street for forty years. I want to hear from homeowners and renters, police officers and teachers, business owners and artists, people downtown and people in neighborhoods that don’t think anybody downtown is listening to them.

And I especially want to bring younger people into the room.

I’ve spent a lot of time lately talking with Gen Z, and what interests me is what they can contribute: technological fluency, new ideas, different experiences and a willingness to question why we keep doing something simply because we’ve always done it that way.

But this isn’t about turning Greensboro over to one generation.

It’s the opposite.

Imagine combining that perspective with the experience of people who’ve spent thirty, forty or fifty years building businesses, raising families and living in this community.

That’s where things could get interesting.

I don’t want an administration where everybody thinks like me.

I want people who will walk into the room and say, “John, that’s a terrible idea—and here’s a better one.”

Good.

Pull up a chair.

Because the objective isn’t to prove that the mayor is the smartest person in Greensboro.

The objective is to tap into the intelligence of Greensboro.

Three hundred thousand people means three hundred thousand different collections of experiences, ideas and perspectives.

Let’s use them.

Let’s make City Hall more accessible. Let’s bring younger residents into civic life. Let’s listen to neighborhoods. Let’s use technology intelligently. Let’s experiment with new ideas, measure whether they work, keep the good ones and admit it when something doesn’t work.

And let’s remember who all of this is supposed to serve.

Everybody.

Young and old. Rich and poor. Black and white. Gay and straight. Republican, Democrat, independent—and the enormous number of people who are sick of all those labels.

Because potholes aren’t Republican.

Affordable housing isn’t Democratic.

A safe neighborhood doesn’t have an ideology.

And a thriving downtown doesn’t ask who you voted for before it lets you through the door.

That’s the kind of mayor I’d want to be.

Not the mayor with all the answers.

The mayor who keeps asking Greensboro the questions—and makes sure everybody gets a seat at the table.