Coffee has become far more than just a hot drink. It’s a lifestyle, an icebreaker, a safe first date in a public place and so much more. It has also become something else, a fast-moving trend called Coffee with the Mayor, which is making waves in towns large and small. A simple search for the term “Coffee with the Mayor” brought up 84,300,000 hits. Why is it so popular? What exactly does it involve? How did it start?

Kim Harrison is the mayor of Weston, W.Va., and she said, “It was a suggestion from one of our citizens to host a regular ‘Coffee with the Mayor’ as a way to inform the public about city services, get comments and suggestions about services. It seemed like a good way to open communication.”

Public officials have to listen to people, because their actions are affecting them, and constituents need to feel heard. She further explained, “That’s the only way to be truly successful.”

And it has been successful right from the start. Each month has a different agenda, and anyone attending can bring up questions or issues. “It usually lasts an hour to an hour and a half. I will start out by presenting the topic, and the police, sanitation department and others will have staff available to talk about anything and everything. If there is a need, then citizens can ask questions. For instance, one meeting was about the facade grant program. Thirty people asked questions. The city council put up $25,000 and the residents could apply for a grant, and the max grant was 50%. With those monies, the city realized $96,000 and will roll out again in 2024,” Harrison said.

In March, Coffee with the Mayor discussed the codification of ordinances, a riverfront park project and other issues in the city of Weston. Officials also talk about and plan fun times.

“We had a meeting (on Sept. 1) and had 30 people there,” explained Harrison. “We wanted to see if our city would go overboard decorating for Halloween; well, they’ve done just that! In particular, you could see a couple of characters like ‘Moss Man’ and a werewolf. And there was a selfie station that looked like a jack-o’-lantern, which made for fun photo shoots. We had a Halloweentown contest, prizes and all.”

In Tehachapi, Calif., Key Budge serves as the community engagement specialist for the city of about 10,000 residents. “We are a mountain community, and we get looked at as a leader among the surrounding unincorporated communities. We want to make sure we are going in the right direction. We started these coffees five or six years ago. I had served as an LA County deputy sheriff for 25 years, and I also came to town with a communications background. One of the things I noticed was a slight disconnect with the community and the government as well. These were very diverse neighborhoods. And we’d recognized ‘Coffee with Cops’ as a way of humanizing yourself with the public. So we put them in a comfortable setting — not Starbucks, but a nice little local shop a couple of hours in the morning. Why not help local small businesses, too? It wasn’t only the mayor and other elected officials, but also public works people who attended. We could give people a direct response rather than coming to a meeting and standing at a podium.” Not everyone enjoys being part of a big meeting, and some of them won’t speak up in such a setting.

Budge, too, agrees that you’ve got to listen to what genuine concerns are for people in the community. “These coffee meetings mean that people get real answers right away. I’ve heard people say they had been passing along the wrong information, but we corrected the script. It’s about reading the entire press release. We’ve built a level of trust.”

Tehachapi’s Coffee with the Mayor occurs at Kamenz Kafe on the third Thursday of each month. “Just in the last week or two, a mom brought her daughter to meet the mayor (Michael Davies) for her civics class. It was an opportunity for the student to learn, not to be intimidated, and at the end, the Mayor wrote an excuse note for the girl’s absence! Now that’s approachable.”

And in Daphne, Ala., Mayor Robin LeJeune enjoys these coffee meetings with his constituents, too. “I’m not sure if it got started before I got there or not — I guess it could have. I’ve been the mayor for three years. I wanted to reach out and let people have access to me — let them know about different projects, let the police come if they want, rather than town hall or city meetings or phone calls. We’re a small town and we wanted a casual setting, coffee and doughnuts. Let me talk a bit and then they could do the same — whether citizens or elected! We all want to be heard.”

LeJeune continued, “We’ve done a lot to invest in the senior center, and we hold the meetings there, and there were people who didn’t know that ‘Hey, we have a senior center!’ We were doing them at 8 a.m. We weren’t getting many people attending, and the seniors were saying it was too early. So we moved it to 9 a.m., and we are also looking at some kind of afternoon/evening version for people who might want to come, but can’t come in the morning. This has worked well and got a lot of great feedback. People get to hear ideas. But I wasn’t expecting the seniors to want to sleep a little later!”

As the old saying goes, “All politics is local,” and LeJeune takes that seriously, too. “I actually preach to government classes and leadership groups, high school kids and college kids; I tell them, if you want to make change without having lots of money and influence, local government is where you have the best chance. Put in some time and effort, and you can really make a real change. One of the prime examples is pickleball. Years ago, we had a small group come to us for pickleball, wanting pickleball — add pickleball! We kept saying no. What’s pickleball? Well, they came back and came back and asked again and again, and we finally said, ‘We give up.’ We figured that we could fit six pickleball courts on two tennis courts, and if it doesn’t work, we told them we’ll take it back. And now we have 12.”

LeJeune said, “We’ve gotten bigger as time goes by. I had cancer last year, so we stepped back a bit, but I got to ring that bell and now we’re back better than before. Our chief of police also does ‘Coffee with a Cop,’ and that’s really been great for the community, too. It gets people involved that are very passionate about things. We have been fortunate that with tremendous growth, we can meet people who are new to the area, and we talk to them so they learn more about the city. Staff takes notes during the meetings, and we talk those over afterward.

“We’re one of the top growing areas; we are second in our state. Our biggest issue has been about that growth. Combating stormwater issues, (constructing) a state-of-the-art animal shelter, road repaving, just always working to keep up with the growth. We’ve been great at getting grants, and that was definitely a goal. I mean, we can’t lock the door and say, ‘Hey, no more — we’re done!’ We have a 20-year plan.”

LeJeune thought for a moment and added, “Anyone who’s wanting to do something like this, you have to have a good working relationship with city council members. If you have competing visions, it will hold you back tremendously. If we’re all on the same page — same vision — it just makes it all work so much better for everyone. We’re always looking for ways to engage the public, get their participation. But because it’s government, a lot of people are hesitant to come into the building or make a phone call. This will let them get to know the employees and departments. Oftentimes, when elected officials get voted in, the best ideas and maybe the only ideas that get listened to are theirs, and you need to take everyone into consideration. It needs to start at the top, with good city management. If they don’t buy it, it’s not going to work. Grass-roots levels add to other things, and that makes a huge difference.”

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