Scott here Waters.

Here.

Well, we're here to interview Eric Swanson and I don't think any of these council members have ever had this job to do.

I've had it a couple times.

So I would suggest uh we didn't go through this type of process.

No, no.

I would suggest we give Mr.

Swanson a chance to give some opening remarks and we'll go from for some questions.

How's that sound?

Sure, and I'll I'll try to be respectful of time.

I know we've got just so much time.

Okay, all right.

No doubt.

Take your time.

All right.

Well, okay, I'm really humbled to be here today uh speaking with you about uh role as a city manager if you so choose.

And uh this has been you know, growing up here and going to school here, and then uh you know becoming a member of the 185th at a young age, a 19th, you know, taught me the values of of servant leadership and working in communities.

Um the experience I got there as a 19-year-old airman, crash firefighter, uh was invaluable because it allowed me to work be in a workspace, but also going to college.

Um also graduated uh University of South Dakota, where I met my bride, and uh we've uh been 38 years later.

We're still still uh we're empty nesters at this point.

But uh anyway, so a lot of a lot of really great things happened to me in Sioux land, if you consider Yangton and you know, growing up here, you know, almost uh over half my life in this in this community in this area in this region.

And uh I've always had to be honest, I I have always had this idea that someday I'd like to be the city manager of Sioux City as as I got in this career and you know, saw what was happening to my community and understanding you know more and more as I got older in this business, um, the kind of things that happened.

And you know, great things are happening here.

I had a great tour this morning.

Uh Marty, who uh you know uh you know, pretty much put all the information out there, didn't get a lot of chances to ask questions.

He was you know, but that's okay.

You know, that's sometimes you know there's a there that's why God gives us two years, one mouth, right?

You gotta listen to more than what we talk and as going around that was definitely informative and the kind of investments that this city's made in their future just is to be um congratulated, and you're doing good good work here, and I'm proud to be a Siouxidian.

And uh so that's kind of that's kind of how I got here.

I mean, I I as I mentioned before I had the uh starting my career in the military and the guard at 19, you know, doing my original enlistment of six years, and then always had it if I had an opportunity to be an officer, you know, I wanted to take take that chance or have that opportunity happen for me.

Um so I mean it's kind of been parallel with my my my job, which has been a real blessing.

Not uh it doesn't happen all the time, um, especially the way the guard system works and promotions and stuff, but I was able to uh uh finally uh be promoted to colonel uh full bird um and during that career um uh deployed to Iraq and uh understand what it is to be leadership under fire.

Um not that city manager necessarily are getting shot at every day or having you know that kind of thing, but the stress is there sometimes and and re responding to those in a calm way and and with leadership skills that I learned from that.

Um yeah, I feel like I could make I would be a good candidate for this position, especially with some of the challenges that you are facing.

I've seen in the community with the infrastructure, homeless, um, some of the other things that that uh are challenging uh to say the least, but have experience with so thank you again and uh appreciate hearing your questions we're just gonna start with Matthew and ask questions as we go if that's okay with you guys.

So Matthew, you can lead it off.

Yeah, you can ask whatever you want.

One's fairly straightforward, but please tell us why you're attracted to this position with the city of Sioux City.

Well, I think the best days for Sioux City are ahead, you know.

I and I want to and I would love to be part of that.

And I think I bring you know the skills and the skill set that's that uh you're looking for experience, um, some successes in economic development, community development, um, success just infrastructure development, grant writing, uh, being able to secure grants for a lot of the projects that uh that the cities that I work for were involved with.

I always felt like that was something that I always look for opportunities to be able to leverage funding from state sources, federal sources.

So I think with the kind of things that you would like to see happen here, and I say you collectively would like to see in this community would like to see.

Um I think I I have that ability to bring some of those experiences to the to the position.

The City of Sioux City is considerably larger than your current community and any of the other cities in which you have served as the chief administrative officer in the past.

Therefore, what challenges do you expect to encounter in managing a significantly larger municipal government and what strategies will you employ to address those challenges?

Sure.

Well, so a couple things I'll say.

One is uh the community the community that I'm currently serving, as you may know, went through a significant disaster, a wildfire went through the community, took out about 25 percent of the city.

Um and I felt uh uh I was asked to be the interim and then eventually the full-time city manager, and I felt an obligation to help them work through that.

Remind me of that population.

It's about 5,000.

Yeah.

Um so the challenges as I faced in that situation, I you know, would be the same same regardless in terms of the population, it's teamwork, it's collaboration, it's finding ways to accomplish rebuilding a police fire uh city hall re and combining them into one structure efficiently with solar.

I mean, those are all project related things that happened during that time that was impacted by COVID and supply change.

So what I'm really getting at is I think that experience, recent most recent experience would would uh equal in larger communities because it involved teamwork, um, and involved you know, working with the state on getting appropriations, working with the feds on getting appropriations, working with private sector, rebuilding a playground uh infrastructure, those kinds of things.

Um, and doing it with really uh very minimal financial uh impact on the city.

Now I was Medford uh City of Medford uh city manager for three years with similar size to Sioux City.

Um I would say, you know, they're both just as equally as challenging, you know, this different, you know, different dynamics, different sizes, different responsibilities.

But you know, again, after uh my career, you know, Yankton was 20,000, 14,000, 20,000 trade area, Roseburg, 25,000, Medford 85,000.