Denise Roth served as Greensboro’s City Manager from 2011 to 2014, gaining a reputation for concentrating on solutions and avoiding political squabbles. That reputation only grew when she was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as the deputy administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration and rose to lead the agency.
Some prominent fellow Democrats criticized Roth for that same steady, apolitical hand after President Donald Trump’s first election. She chose to leave the GSA without ending a lease for a luxury hotel from which she said Trump should have voluntarily divested, defending the decision after rebukes from some Democrats in Congress and The New York Times.
In this year’s paradigm-shifting city council election, Roth is pursuing an at-large seat, looking to bring her deep knowledge of city government to the council. It’s her first run for political office, and she said that’s not a step she took lightly. Her husband, Chip Roth, ran in District 3 back in 2022, but had to pull out of the race to concentrate on his health after a prostate cancer diagnosis. He ultimately endorsed Zack Matheny, who returned to council in that election after stepping down a few years earlier to become President and CEO of Downtown Greensboro Inc.
Running at-large rather than in the district seemed a better fit, Roth said. She wants to concentrate on the whole city rather than just her home district. Also, she said, running for one of the three at-large seats on the nine-member council lets her define herself on her own merits as a candidate rather than in opposition to an incumbent council member.
“There is a great deal of transition and opportunity for transformation that is on the horizon for Greensboro over the next five to 10 years,” Roth said in an interview last week. “And with that comes great opportunity and great risk all at the same time. It’s two sides of the same coin. And so what I’m really interested in is how we pursue that transition in a way that really lifts the community across the board.”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
With so many seats turning over on the city council this election, there has been a lot of emphasis on where the city is now and where a new council could take it. With recent economic development wins and the potential for an influx of new residents, Mayor Nancy Vaughan has said her message to the new council has essentially been, “Don’t mess this up.” What challenges do you see for the new council?
I think we have to be looking out for people that are underemployed, for areas that are underinvested, for businesses that have languished, small businesses who are looking for their next opportunity. But also for students coming here and identifying Greensboro as a place that they could actually see themselves with a career path. There’s also, from just the infrastructure standpoint, how we get ready for all of that growth and transition. Everything from improving our housing stock to bringing new types and sizes and price points of housing on the line to where that growth actually takes place.
What I do know for sure is that we’re not facing these challenges for the first time, and there are other communities that have faced them before. There are strategies there. But you have to outline them, identify them, understand them, and then commit a path to overcoming them. And it won’t be easy.
I think the biggest risk I’m not sure is fully appreciated is the fact that if we’re not prepared for this growth and change, we could miss it overall. Where the Toyota [battery plant] is physically located, where the airport is, there are great roads coming to and from them in many different directions. And you want the community that invested in those things, the things that are developing, to benefit. There were a great deal of people who raised money and put a lot of sweat and time and cajoling into bringing together the [Greensboro-Randolph] megasite that were from Greensboro. In order to really ensure that the Greensboro tax base benefits and the people benefit, we have to ensure that we’re ready. We have to be an attractive place for them to come.
When I first began to hear the rumor you’d be running, one of the first things I thought was, “A former city manager running for council—I don’t know if we’ve seen that before.” We have a strong manager system. The manager has their hand on all the levers. But council is a different thing. Before deciding to run, you must have done a lot of thinking about how that role will be different.
I have. Especially because, before I went to run, I needed to ask myself why I was running, what was the right seat for me, and what would it be? There are some parts of what it’s like to be an elected official that I have not experienced before. I would say the key part is having to be on the spot and stand up for what they believe is right or wrong once they get to that place.
I’ve always been the person sort of beside them, saying, “Here are the choices you have, and it depends on what you’re wanting to achieve. You can go this way and this will happen. You can go that way and that will happen. And I can make you successful either way. Just let me know what we’re doing.”
City managers and county managers are thinking about strong policy and those policy directions. But there is a political aspect of policy that can be very different. But in the 10 years since I left, I’ve done a lot of different things that really have elevated my viewpoint of how things evolve and how to make them evolve. And also, my spirit influence has changed both with the experience I’ve had at a national level and how that translates to the local level.
We’ve talked a bit about the need for affordable housing. One of the largest and most divisive issues in the city seems to be the rise in homelessness and how that should be addressed. I’m seeing it often framed as “What can we do to help these people?” vs. “These people shouldn’t be seen, they’re hurting business and development.” What are your thoughts on what we’re seeing now and what we can and should be doing?
The discussion seems to stop at how to deal with the homeless challenge on a day-to-day basis as opposed to the chronic overall homeless need. I’ll say this about many things: I don’t think our problems and challenges are as extensive as other communities, and they’re actually solvable with the resources that we have today. There are groups and resources that we can bring together.
I think that we need to create a sustainable approach to our homeless challenge. We need to recognize that not all homelessness is equal. We have some people who are sort of on the bubble, who are at risk—a couple of days away or a paycheck away from challenges and sort of need safety nets. And then there’s people who have mental health challenges. And then the people who are just on it, like they actually prefer the lifestyle or have other challenges that you know they’re always going to be out there in some way.
We have the ability to address especially that first and second population, come up with strategies. And then we’re going to find that third population in Greensboro is not as extensive as you have in some places, or they’re more transient.
Does it have an impact on economic development and investment downtown? Probably. And actually, I’ve heard specifically of executives bringing others to town for recruitment purposes, whether it’s new businesses or employees, and being deterred by the lack of people, coupled with the presence of homelessness.
But I go to a lot of cities, and it’s not uncommon. I think of a trip I had to Richmond in which we rented an Airbnb downtown. I like to see downtowns. And there it was just extensive. It was a lot of drugs and a lot of homeless, and we experienced that the whole way to the restaurant and back to the Airbnb. We’re not there.
I really would advocate for us to have a 90-day commitment. We will do all the work, but we are going to give a 90-day window of resolution. We’re going to bring in whoever we need to, whether it’s the nonprofits that are currently serving or others from other communities that have dealt with this. We need our staff to hear all of them, and we need to actually create a plan.
If you ask me, if you ask anyone, “What is the city’s strategy for meeting the homeless challenge?” You hear everything from more officers to moving people out to looking at potential campuses. But I don’t really hear what the actual plan is. I’m a firm believer that you can’t get anywhere without knowing where you’re going. And instead, the conversation just keeps swirling.
Unfortunately, I think that probably happens more often than it should. I don’t want to be dismissive of how difficult these things are, but there are some things that need to be addressed that haven’t really been managed or planned for over the past years, or we just haven’t found solutions. I think underinvestment in East Greensboro is another example of that.
From housing to environmental remediation to food deserts, there are a lot of challenges that have been discussed, but for which there never seems to be a resolution. How can we resolve some of this?
I don’t think it happens overnight, but then there are sort of systemic efforts we need to get into. Is there a partner we could work with from a development standpoint that can be incentivized to bring whatever, fill-in-the-blank, is needed? And are there temporary steps that we can do now in terms of whether it’s a farmer’s market or something of that nature? It’s not something you solve right away. And so that’s why I say, what is the 10-year horizon of work we need to do?
Something that I’ve talked about quite a bit is, we need a road map or a playbook of what our needs look like. If we have a lot of planning that our staff has done, that’ll be very helpful for that. But we need a policy playbook that says we, as a city, are going to commit to having these things in place. We’re going to do these things on this schedule.
Another big challenge we’re seeing right now is how state and local governments are dealing with ICE agents and other federal forces coming into their communities. The highest profile example in Greensboro was probably the case of Mohamed Naser, who was here legally and was taken without any apparent justification and interrogated about a nation in which he’d never lived and with which he had no contact. What do you see as the role of local leaders in dealing with some of this?
I think the thing I’m most concerned about is [ensuring] that people’s civil liberties are not violated.
How do I feel about what’s happening? I think there are people who came to our country for a better way of life. They’re actually contributing to the economy. Finding a path for them to stay, if they’re not criminals or sort of creating harm against others, is important. I think from a city council member perspective, it’s necessary for us to be consistent and follow the federal law. We can object to what we’re seeing on a national level, but also be held accountable to what we have to tolerate. I think that watching the D.C. mayor is a great example of that. There’s things in home rule that she had to tolerate—not her preference, but it’s federal law. So the first thing is for us to uphold the law, and then we can challenge it, we can question it, we can look for changes. But we have to deal with the law.
Whatever happens in November, we’re looking at a lot of new faces on the city council. That can be good, but I’ve also seen it be a little disorienting as people figure out their roles and try to work together. Do you think your experience as city manager can help you navigate that new council period?
I want to be a solution finder and to make sure we don’t get stuck in the space of, “Where are the bathrooms?” Because that can happen. But I do think that there will be some disorientation in that there will need to be warming and storming as there are with new groups overall. I am hoping to be, especially in the back room, an individual that is bringing approaches to bear, that is going to give us direction.
Something I would love to see—after the election, but before we take office—is for there to be a coordinated strategy session or work plan in which the mayor and the council just comes together and says, “Okay, hey, what do we want the first 100 days to look like? What do we want the first six months to look like?” Where are we going to?