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“One of the things that my travel has done is expose me to not only new ideas but to a number of other cities. I don’t think we should ever grow tired of looking for good ideas and opportunities in those often found in other cities and organizations outside of our community,” Danner said.
Jim Fair
Greer Mayor Rick Danner entertained the Board of Directors for Dalian Chamber of Commerce in Jinzhou New District.
Scott Stevens
Mayor Rick Danner shucks oysters in December at a fundraiser for former Great Bay Oyster House owner Stan Christofferson who died in May 2012. Proceeds went to families to offset their costs of medicine and other cancer related expenses.
Jim Fair
Mayor Rick Danner and Sen. Lindsey Graham chat during the Inland Port groundbreaking last March. The port opened for business in mid-October.
Jim Fair
Mayor Rick Danner signs a proclamation for Little Miss Greer Taylor Singleton. Danner enjoys honoring youth and talking with them during visits at City Hall and City Council meetings.
“Anything I do in this role can be a learning experience. From that standpoint, having seen what has been done in a city of eight million and a city of (2,500), I’ve been able to glean good ideas from both of them. We don’t have a corner on the market for good ideas, and I constantly find myself looking and talking about what has made cities better. We are like that gangly teenager right now. We’re growing up or we’re growing up fast, but we’re not a child anymore, and we’re not really an adult. We’re at the development phase, and what we look like ten years from now or (20) years from now will largely depend on what we are doing right now.”
Management style is an asset
Danner’s management style has served him well from his early landscape architecture business to working through a maze of personalities in keeping city council focused on its current mission and also on Greer’s future.
“He does a really good job of leading the council where we need to go,” Driggers said. “He doesn’t get involved in day to day operations. He understands very well what my role is, and he understands very well what his role is, and he capitalizes on that. Many community’s mayors over-extend or they get into areas where they are not effective. Rick really understands where he can be effective and that’s where he spends his time and energy.”
Danner agrees with Driggers’ description, and he laughed when he said, “I am a much more broad, kind of guy than I am detailed. I see my role as seeing where we are going, and I let (Driggers) figure out how to get there.”
Reynolds concurred. “As chief I want somebody that is honest, professional and knows what’s going on and is fair in dealing with me and some of the situations we face. We’re not always right, and we have issues sometimes. But as long as they deal with us fairly and with reason . . . I think he’s all that.
“And when he has a problem with something we’ve done, the way he presents it to me is very fair. Sometimes we might have been wrong, but he doesn’t judge,” Reynolds said.
“I guess that is a style I developed years ago,” Danner said. “ I’ve always been active in church, Boy Scouts, YMCA, school, city government . . . all those things since I was small. I think I found that to be an effective style for me. It worked very effectively for me when I was in business for myself and my feeling was to hire good capable, efficient people and empower them and you will get much better results than hovering over them.”
It was a book by Robert Greenleaf on “Servant Leadership” that solidified Danner’s management philosophy. “It was like a light bulb went off because I said, ‘this is it. Good night, this is me.’ ”
“(Rick) is a good person. And that’s one of the things you can see. He’s an effective politician. But he’s a good person. I think that’s what makes him very effective and makes him very successful,” Driggers said.
Passion couldn’t overcome politics
Danner faced arguably his biggest disappointment in 2013 when Greenville County Council dissolved the Greenville County Recreation District. All six cities in the county, Greer included, were forced to contribute to the newly formed County Department of Parks and Recreation with no assurances of any benefit. That added about $20 to each Greer taxpayer’s bill in Greenville County. Greer had opted out of participating in the past but County Council’s resolution eliminated that option.
“That continues to be a real challenge that I cared very deeply about,” Danner said. “I honestly feel and still feel today that the situation was not handled well. There wasn’t an appropriate amount of dialogue that took place before a course of direction was set that wasn’t really reversible. We knew the die was cast. We knew it was an uphill battle.
“What frustrated me more than anything else in the entire process was that my passion about that . . . I don’t know if it was misinterpreted or I was branded as an obstructionist to the process. And I think there was an attempt to minimalize my concern by branding me as an obstructionist, that I couldn’t work with county officials. It was kind of a bad egg sort of thing. That really wasn’t the truth at all. If they would have come to the mayors and said ‘let’s sit down and figure out what this thing is going to look like’ we obviously wouldn’t be where we are today.”
“All in” for Greer
Danner has lived in Greer since 1978 with his wife, Rita, a native of the city, and they have two grown sons, Sam and Jacob. He recognizes he is farther along in his career serving Greer and is beginning to think how history will record his tenure.
“I don’t think it’s time to start talking about legacies, but I think it’s about time to begin thinking about it,” Danner said. “At some point, when I look back at whatever time I spent as mayor, what is it I’m going to say I’m most proud of, or I thought was the most impactful or the most difference I made? I got in this to very humbly and very simply to make a difference.”
He likens how Sen. Smith is remembered. “Sen. Smith has been gone long enough that when people recall him, now it’s a sense of reflection. If you ask somebody particularly who knew Sen. Smith, the first thing that comes to mind instantly is something to the effect he cared about Greer. He was an advocate for Greer. He would go to battle for Greer. That’s pretty much a compliment.
“People who knew him knew his heart was in Greer whether he was serving in Columbia or sitting at the Tire Exchange. When all is said and done that would be the ultimate compliment . . . as Mayor ‘he cared’. Or as Dabo (Swinney, Clemson head football coach) would say, he is ‘all in’ for Greer."
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