Welcome to another episode of Less People. I’m Jenny Russell. There is a debate that goes on in our office about some of the best TV shows out there, and historically best TV shows, and two of the TV shows that come up often, and it’s kind of a competition between the two for which one is the best, but the competition is between the TV show The Office, the American version of The Office, and the TV show Parks and Recreation.
A couple years ago, I had never seen either one of them, and two of my office mates were always talking about, referencing, and talking about those two shows, and you know, all of the different puns and things that come off of those kind of TV shows, and I had no clue what they were ever talking about, so they challenged me one time to sit down and actually watch those shows. I binged watched every season of The Office, and then when I got done with that, I binged watched Parks and Recreation. The podcast’s question this week is going to be, which one is better, the TV show The Office, or the TV show Parks and Rec? So, I’d love to hear your input as to which TV show reigns superior between those two.
After actually watching both of them, I came up with the fact that I think Parks and Recreation is my favorite of the two. Not that I dislike either one, but I like The Office, but definitely Parks and Rec is probably my favorite, and one of the reasons why is because of how accurate it is with my everyday life and the job that I do, and I get it’s a fictionalized version, and it’s a version that is played up for comedy, but some of it rings very, very true. So, we’re going to do some analysis here between Parks and Recreation and Real Economic Development as to what similarities there are about this.
The first clip comes from one of the best characters on the show, April, and she is very deadpanned, a lot like Wednesday from Wednesday Addams type of a person, and this is a clip of her. So, listen in. …coordinates goes through.
There’s too much red tape. Mm-hmm. This gridlock drives me nuts.
Tell me about it. Yeah, I think you’re going to have to make an end road, you know? Mm-hmm. Go right to the commissioner on this one.
You know what? I hadn’t thought of that. That is a really great idea. Yeah, I’m going to do that.
Okay. Your last resort is probably going to be city council. Good luck there.
My thoughts exactly. I have no idea what I was saying. All right.
So, what I learned about this, learned from this clip is the learning curve is big when it comes to economic development. I don’t think people realize that all the intricacies and how to conquer these big subjects and then actually how to get things done in this world. It takes about, I would say about three years, three to five years to really know what you are doing in the economic development world, to understand all of the local issues, and then to understand the local solutions that are out there, then to understand the state programs, and then the federal programs, and then all the private grant foundations and programs that can help you get this work done.
Also, the intricacy between boards is really interesting. It’s nice to have two boards. I’ve heard some economic development people say that they are just a city economic development, or they are just a county economic development.
Right now, our economic development is set up as a county economic development, but the major city in the county does pay a little bit more than the others. But there are certain things that you can always, certain issues that are better addressed by either a team approach of both the county and the city are on board, or a county board might not be very progressive at that point. And if you stick it out long enough, you start to realize that the progressiveness of councils and commissions vary depending on the election and who has been elected.
So sometimes you get a county commission that is not very progressive and doesn’t really want to spend money on anything, or they don’t really understand their role and how to get things done. And then you just kind of wait it out until the next commission is on, and that commission might have a completely different view than the first commission. Same thing with city councils.
Sometimes you have a very progressive city council. They are a very laid back city council. Sometimes they don’t want to pass anything city council.
It’s nice to have a good variation between what you can get done through the commission, and then certain things you can get done through the city council, some things you can work together on. So it’s just always different, and it’s important that you have both options, because certain grants can go through the county, and then certain grants can go through the city, and then certain grants are better produced when both work together. So it’s nice to have a combination.
Hey, Pearl. How’s it going? Fine. Except hearing Joan talk about her passion and doing what you really love, totally freaks me out.
Eight years ago, I accepted a random internship at the parks department, and then Leslie told me to do a bunch of stuff, and now I’m executive director of regional whatever. I don’t even know what it means, and I never even asked myself if I even really like it. I mean, it’s like, what is my purpose in life? What do I even care about? My insides are dying.
So not fine. I don’t know what to do. I have to quit.
To do what? I’m just gonna go live under a bridge and ask people riddles before they cross. All right. In this clip, she talks about being an intern and how she’s questioning her life, because this is not the way she thought it would go.
But I think all of us that have been in just working world a long time understand this very much. Sometimes you get into certain aspects of work that you never even thought of when you were a younger person, or when you were going to a college, or when you were going to tech school. And now that you’ve been working for a while, you’re like, this is not something that I ever thought I would be in.
My husband actually has a physical education degree, and he was going to be a teacher. And he didn’t have a teaching job open in the district that he wanted to be. He wanted to be in this home district here.
And there was no teaching jobs when he first came out of college. So he took a job at a bank. And then he became a banker for many years with a physical education degree.
And so life just throws you some curveballs every once in a while. I was just talking about internships. And we have a really solid internship program around here with the NextGen Run-Up for Youth Internship Program.
And those of you that do have access to an internship program that regularly allows you to take on interns throughout your organization, it’s a real advantage. They bring in new ideas and new skills that maybe you do not have at the moment in where you live. And or in your job.
So it’s nice to have them come in. Then it’s also nice for interns to see and be exposed to your town, your area, your community. Because if they don’t have exposure to you, there’s probably no way they’re going to choose you unless they have lived there first.
And even then, students that have grown up in your area maybe don’t realize all the opportunities that are available. And internships expose them to that. I’ve actually wrangled quite a few interns over the years we’ve gotten.
It’s an advantage for the organization and the businesses to also have intern access because those are potential new employees. And you get to try them out before they become full-time employees. And you get to know them and their skills.
We’ve, our current architect, Harley, she’s our current architecture lead, rural architecture lead, and she was one of our interns. We’ve hired a few over the years that were in our office as interns. So interns always give some nice exposure to potential employees.
Okay, another clip from the Parks and Recreation that made a lot of sense is this one here. Thank you, ma’am. What a story.
Anyone else? Anyone? This gentleman wants to say something. No, I don’t. Come on, Mel.
You’re always up in arms about something. No, I’m not. I’m not always up in arms about something.
Here we go. That’s the spirit. So your department banned me from attending games just because I yell you suck at the players? According to the complaint, you yelled it at five-year-old girls.
Who suck? Why is that so hard to understand? Okay, well, I have something to say. One at a time, please. I hate the one-at-a-time system.
Well, I don’t carry my birth certificate around with me. Why? Because you’re hiding something? You should go back where you came from. I am back from where I came from.
That sentence was confusing. You might as well be from China. That’s ridiculous.
I’m from here. Crowd is getting very hostile, Ms. Knope. I’m going to get you out of here.
Back off! So how many of you have actually ever attended your city council or county commission meeting? I’ll let you think about that. Most people haven’t. That’s what I have learned.
And when I first was in economic development coming right out of college, I had to go to a lot of city council and county commission meetings. And I realized how important those meetings are. Not necessarily for a watchdog type of a thing.
Not necessarily because they’re not competent on their own as board. And I can’t just trust what they’re doing. But people are not always educated about how things go through government.
They don’t understand all of the different items and intricacies that councils and county commissioners have to consider when they’re making decisions. And most have never had exposure to those organizations until they serve on it or they have an issue and they actually show up. That was the only time most people attend.
And I always thought, you know, once I leave this job, I’m going to always attend council. And I’m going to continue to do that as a civilian after I was in economic development the first time. The reality is, I never went.
It just didn’t prioritize it as a citizen of the community that wasn’t involved in something related to the government already. But I do feel like it’s a really important thing to go and understand how your councils work. I’ve had people go, oh, that person has to be great on council.
I’m like, have you never been to a council meeting? That person is terrible on council. But they, you know, a person in public doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re a great person to have on a council or a board. So going and actually understanding who you’ve elected and then what kind of issues they’re actually dealing with and how they’re being able to deal with the budget that they have is a really important dynamic.
But you see all kinds of people when you’re on county commission and city council. Some of them are very heated emotionally once they get there or before they even get there. You’re dealing with some nuisance abatement issues.
You’re dealing with things that people just get upset about. And a lot of people don’t understand how the government works. I was at a federal, like a federal representative from the U.S. government.
So like our U.S. senator was having a town hall and somebody just showed up and they were talking about our state governor and how they didn’t like the state governor. And they were hoping that our national representative could do something about the governor. I’m like, those are completely different things.
I mean, one’s a state, one’s a federal. You’re not, you don’t have control over the other. So I was just, you know, you see things like that.
People that don’t always understand how things work or they’re passionate about something and they don’t understand or they come in heated and don’t really have a level head on their shoulders about that particular thing. This clip is next. Then we went and visited Honolulu City Hall.
Shut up. You know. Oh my God, what was it like? It was amazing.
Well, it looked amazing, but it was closed. Oh my God, bummer. A brief history of everything that has ever happened since Pawnee was founded.
Not like you get extra credit for this, but I did type it from memory. And for the first time ever compiled, it includes a complete list of every official town slogan we’ve ever had. Oh my God, that was like.
I know. Can you believe it? That’s crazy. And it made me laugh.
This clip made me laugh because you do become a walking encyclopedia about the things that you do every day. My husband and I, he’s actually from the area that we live in now. I am not.
And he’s always like, who is that? How do you know that person? I’m like, I don’t know. I learned that some meeting or, I mean, I’ve been around long enough now. I just come across people daily.
I’m also a little more social person than he is. And so I just pick up on people, but I laugh because I’m like, you’re from here and I’m not, and I know way more people than you. But so you get to know a lot of people.
You also get to know a lot of facts about where you live that you would never have to know, or you probably would never research on your own. And Luke and I, when Luke Mahin used to work here and now he runs Irrigation Ales Brewery, he used to be even more like this. We’re both kind of statistical nerds, like statistics, the class in college.
There was a lot of people that hated that class. That was actually a class I really liked. I think of statistics as math, and it’s not math at all.
It’s more reading different statistical data and then making sense about what that really means. So the census, we love the census around here. A lot of economic development people do because it tells you, it gives you a parameter.
It gives you a goal meter on if you’re actually attaining what you’re trying to do, which is ultimately trying to turn around population loss. So when the census comes out, I wish it could come out more often. I get the problems with that and the logistical challenges of that.
But since this comes out, we all get really excited because then we actually have stats and numbers to put toward what we’ve been working on and to tell you what’s been working, what’s not, what’s actually making a change. So that’s really fun. But yeah, it’s like a pita, but where I live, that’s probably me.
And then this clip is our last clip for the Parks and Rec episode of Less People. Here we go. Because you haven’t had a single meeting with anyone since I became your assistant.
That’s because every time someone calls and requests a meeting with you, I always schedule it for March 31st. Why? Because I didn’t think March 31st existed. 30 days has September, April, March and November.
June and November. Today is March 31st. I know.
So then how many meetings do I have today? 93. The amount of meetings. There are all kinds of meetings in this job.
I used to, when I first came about as economic development, I used to go to meetings in the morning and then I’d go to work all day in the morning. And then I would go to a lunch meeting and then I would go to work in the afternoon. Then I’d come back for an evening meeting.
There are tons and tons and tons of meetings. This job is about knowing people, hearing people, listening to people, and getting people’s input and feedback. And you can only do that when people are available.
Most people have other jobs. It’s a volunteer-led community. And most people are not available during regular hours of the day, like regular eight to five working hours.
So economic development people tend to have to meet in the nighttimes or before work or at lunch to actually get that input from those people. Also get a lot of phone calls and a lot of emails from people needing help or wanting some guidance on different subjects. Actually, funny story, got on some sort of a call list.
I have no idea and don’t know if somebody tried to steal my information or somebody wrote me down on some sort of a, you know, credit card. I don’t know what happened.
But either way, anyways, I started getting spam calls. So in addition to all of the phone calls I get for work, I got spam calls. And they were, at first, like every five minutes I would get a spam call.
And I’m like, this is ridiculous. So I started having to write it down and like push block on each single one, every single one, every five minutes. Finally, that has slowed down.
But I got back from vacation and the first thing my phone did was start giving me spam calls again. So welcome to the spam call world. All right, that’s my points about parks and recreation and the actual relating it to work as an economic development person.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. Again, answer our podcast question this week. Are you an office fan or are you a parks and recreation fan? Which one is a better show? I will talk to you again next week on another episode of Less People.