New Kissimmee city manager ready to take on the challenge

Home

Community

Kissimmee

Other Sun Publications

FREE DELIVERY!
Get Free Delivery! Request your Osceola News Gazette Today.

Login Form

2013 Osceola Health

2013 Sexual Predator Sexual Offender List sexualpredatorcover13

Windows on the Classroom March 2013

School Calendar
2012-2013

View our other Special Sections

New Kissimmee city manager ready to take on the challenge

Around Osceola

Thursday, 30 September 2010 13:19

By Brian McBride
Associate Editor
If anybody would have told new Kissimmee City Manager Mike Steigerwald in his younger years that he would be standing today as the top administrator of a municipality, he probably would have thought they were crazy.
Yet, the 42-year-old former city planner with a hearty laugh is indeed orchestrating city business from the fifth floor of City Hall since being handed the keys by former City Manager Mark Durbin earlier this month.
“It’s been a lot of work, but it’s been gratifying,” said Steigerwald, who was still working last week to move into his new office.
What’s been his first order of business? Trying to get out and meet the 700-plus staff members the city employs to “listen to them and understand what their concerns are,” Steigerwald said.
What’s been the most challenging chore of the job right now?
“Trying to remember everybody’s names,” Steigerwald said with a chuckle.
While no two days have been the same for Steigerwald so far, he said the goals remain the same: work to meet the needs of the residents, as well as address problems and provide the direction to department heads to satisfy the goals the City Commission set each year. That equals to a lot of daily meetings and often requires to get “in the zone” to complete the day, Steigerwald said.
Taking on the responsibility of being Kissimmee’s chief operating officer didn’t come without some nervousness, he said. Was it the first day on the job? No, it was actually the day before during Durbin’s parting celebration Sept. 2 the City Commission held in his honor at the Kissimmee Civic Center. It hit Steigerwald right then and there that he was now running the show.
“That was probably the scariest moment,” he said.
But he had plenty of preparation. Before leaving his post, Durbin said he had groomed Steigerwald to take the reins.
“The city is going to be in great hands with Mike and staff,” Durbin said at his send-off ceremony.
Some key lessons Steigerwald learned from Durbin he said were: be ethical in decision-making. Listen to each party and make the decisions best for everyone.
Secondly, “go with your gut,” Steigerwald said. Meaning, following one’s instincts.
And thirdly, keep politics out of commission business, Steigerwald said.
The former defensive end for Buffalo University began his quest in 1994, when he found the Kissimmee job listing for a planner job while living on Long Island. Recently graduated from the university with a master’s degree in urban planning, Steigerwald hopped onto an Amtrak train and headed south. As soon as he stepped off that train in downtown Kissimmee, he was hooked.
“I fell in love with the place,” he said.
It was the quaint downtown and the pristine lakefront that appealed to him. It reminded him of his hometown of Sayville, N.Y.
After the interview, he was offered the job right on the spot, which caught him by surprise. He said he needed time to talk it over with his parents, but ultimately took the job and moved to Kissimmee. He was later promoted to planning manager and then to Development Services director, a job he held for seven years until the deputy city manager slot opened. Competing against some other city department directors, Steigerwald was tapped to serve as Durbin’s right-hand man.
He now has many challenges before him: finishing Lakefront Park, revitalizing Vine Street and overseeing the growth of Kissimmee Gateway Airport. But they’re challenges he welcomes. It gives him the ability to continue to shape the growth of the city, he said.
“I see plenty of potential we haven’t tapped into yet,” he added.
Steigerwald, a former surfer, who once aspired to be a TV sports cameraman before he was influenced by architecture and design, still has to move into Kissimmee city limits. A recent charter change voted in by residents in August mandated that any Kissimmee city manager now must live in city limits. He currently lives in St. Cloud. So he’s got to sell his home and find one in Kissimmee.
“That has been a layer of stress I didn’t expect,” he said.
The commission however, doesn’t expect it to happen overnight and has agreed to give him some time, Steigerwald said.
Married for 11 years with three children — two boys and a girl — Steigerwald said when he’s not working, he loves watching college football. He and the family have season tickets to University of Central Florida Knight football games. He also spends time coaching his sons’ Little League baseball teams and likes taking the family out on the boat he owns.
Now making $129,000 a year, an increase from the $113,000 he made as deputy city manager, Steigerwald said he didn’t expect to break Durbin’s record of 23 years as city manager. Tentative plans are to take early retirement at 55, where he’ll have a total of 30 years as a city employee.
“My goal is to be the second-longest city manager in the history of the city,” he said with a smile.