Eric Mack…Tipp City’s new City Manager
“I’m really excited, and I’m thankful Council has given me the opportunity to take this new step in this role. I look forward to the new challenges. Tipp City is a great community and I think there’s a lot of opportunity here to make things better, as we’ve been doing, and continue the progress.”
Such was the start of my interview with Eric Mack, recently selected by the City Council as Tipp’s new City Manager. I asked Mack if seeking this new role was a recent decision or if it had always been his goal. He said, “I went to college with the hopes of eventually becoming a City Manager, somewhere…that was the ultimate goal. Growing up, you could actually see at the local level the government folks making changes, and that you could make a difference.”
As a result, Mack went to Wright State and graduated with a degree in Urban Planning. He began work at the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission (MVRPC) while returning to Wright State for a master’s degree in Public Administration after a brief stint working on his master's in Chicago. He worked at MVRPC for several more years until he got a job offer in Tipp City. “Did I think twelve years ago I’d be City Manager of Tipp City one day? I didn’t really think that, but it’s been a goal of mine. It’s been a cool experience, and Tipp has just been a good place.”
Eric Mack is originally from Dayton, went to Chaminade Julienne High School, and grew up in the Dayton area. He came to work in Tipp twelve years ago. He’s married to Ashley, who he met at Wright State, has the same degree as Mack, and works for Montgomery County (Mack laughed about that). Eric and Ashley have two kids, a first-grader and a fourth-grader.
Mack and his family love to spend time outside at the Tipp pool, parks, bike trails, etc. They hike, camp, and backpack in national parks. Mack also goes on an annual backpack trip with friends, taking food, water, clothes, a tent, etc. Two years ago, Mack and Ashley went to northern Montana, which is grizzly bear country. Just 15 minutes into the hike, they spotted their first grizzly bear and wondered, “What have we gotten ourselves into?”
Mack and his family also play tennis at the Schroeder Tennis Center and travel around Ohio, just seeing the sights.
I asked Mack what the weirdest thing had happened to him in Tipp. He thought for a while and said, “The 2014 flood seemed to come out of nowhere. We lost substation #1 for a while, lost three of our electric-maintenance trucks, and the 4th Street culvert collapsed, so we had to shut down the street.”
I also wondered if he had any specific plans for Tipp City. “I think the first thing to do is keep the current construction projects going while replacing my former position and continue the work uptown with interchange beautification and other items. We want to improve City Park and make sure it’s a really nice ‘destination park’ for our citizens, with new playground equipment and pathway and lighting upgrades. Also, we have a really good staff, but looking out into the next five years, we’ve got lots of retirements coming up, and we need to ensure we continue to have a good staff in the future by doing some succession planning.”
In closing, Mack stated, “I’m really excited about this new opportunity, excited to work with City Council, and looking forward to getting started in July. I want to continue the progress we’ve made in the last decade and keep making improvements. I’m thankful for the support of staff and Council, and I’m ready to get started.”