Deborah Mohlenhoff, founding City Manager at Ithaca, NY.

Deborah Mohlenhoff is a public-sector executive, leadership educator, and community strategist with more than 20 years of experience spanning city government, higher education, and nonprofit leadership.She most recently served as the founding City Manager for the City of Ithaca, New York, where she established the city’s first professional administrative structure and led major efforts to modernize operations, strengthen leadership capacity, and align budgets and policy with community priorities.In this podcast, she shares her insights on:Vacancy Tax - What is it and how it is being usedStrict vs. UnStrict ordinances - how they help or restrict businesses.When storefronts sit empty, is that a market issue or a policy issue?Do we build more housing to attract businesses, or attract businesses to justify more housing? Which comes first?Are commercial lease structures quietly working against long-term small business success?Has cannabis legalization strengthened Ithica's downtown — or complicated it? If you could change one economic lever tomorrow to unlock growth, what would it be?and bunch of ear nuggets along the way.