Dubuque Mayor Brad Cavanaugh. (City of Dubuque photo)
Two Iowa mayors will soon be heading home from the United States Conference of Mayors, which is wrapping up its 91st annual meeting today in Columbus, Ohio.
Dubuque Mayor Brad Cavanagh, who was elected to the post last year, is attending the gathering for the first time and says he’s found it to be exhilarating. “We get the opportunity really just to see what other cities are up to and how they are trying to implement all these strategies to do things like get the infrastructure funding that’s been available through the federal government, put that to good use,” Cavanagh says. “All the issues that you think about today from staffing and policing and recreation and everything that matters in the city. It’s good to be able to talk to other mayors about how they’re doing some of that.”
All cities of all sizes face challenges and Cavanagh says he’s gaining some insights at the conference he may be able to put into practice when he gets back to Dubuque. “We lost all our commercial air service in the last year and one of the ways that we’re working hard to get that back is to talk to our partners in the federal government on a regular basis,” the mayor says. “This is a great opportunity to connect with all kinds of federal departments, because quite a few attend this conference, so you get great access to them to be able to have those frank conversations about things like that.”
Just under 200 mayors are at the event. In a gathering of this scale, Cavanagh says party affiliations don’t matter as people are more interested in making alliances, not divisions. “One of the things that you recognize when you’re hanging out with other local officials — and especially mayors — is that the local level is where things are getting done,” Cavanagh says. “We’re the ones who are in direct connection with our residents. We’re the ones who are trying to deal with the problems on the ground level and I think it actually gives me a lot of hope in the United States and in our democracy when I go to something like this and see people that are doing really great work.”
Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie is also attending the conference, which opened last Friday.