The man for any job
Steve Shular was pulled over on the side of the street in Binghamton, taking notes outside of a debris-strewn yard and a vacant house, when a black sedan pulled up alongside his city of Memphis-marked car.
The women rolled down their window and told him a code enforcement officer who was supposed to stop by earlier hadn’t shown up. Shular handed them his city business card and said he’d help them sort it out.
“I kind of look at this as similar to an usher. You’ve got to get people in, get them seated, and get them what they need,” Shular said. “People need a way in.”
Shular’s title is special assistant to the mayor for neighborhood concerns, but it may as well be problem solver-inchief.
On a rainy Thursday morning in late October, Shular met Carpenter Art Garden Executive Director Henry Nelson to tour the Binghamton neighborhood, making notes on his clipboard of a host of code enforcement issues.
Junk cars, yards and porches covered in debris, piles of tires, 12-inch high grass and vacant homes without windows or boards are among the issues they see. Shular thinks of those as the things that can “break the spirit” of people living in the neighborhood.
Shular spends at least three-quarters of his time in the field, and he thinks of his car as his office. His city-issued cell phone is on 24/7. He spends weekend hours on neighborhood cleanups, at community meetings and when a community leader emails him on a Sunday
Jamie Munks