For a man fast approaching the end of his life, Steve Manor, 81, is incredibly upbeat as he talks about the future of the city he loves. Under hospice care and using oxygen 24/7, Manor knows his time is limited, and all he wants to talk about during our interview is the city that he’s served for over two decades. (And if you throw in his time teaching, Manor’s been a public servant in the Howell community for nearly 60 years.)
For the past five years, though, Manor has been battling cancer. He learned in April that there were no more treatment options for him, and now he’s busy tying up the details of a life, like bank accounts and title changes. And he resigned from the Howell City Council last month.
“I’m getting it done,” Manor said. “And I’m doing OK.”
Manor, who has been both a council member and Howell’s mayor pro term, has served on numerous community boards and committees. He’s been involved with the Livingston Diversity Council and the Howell Rotary Club; he’s been president of the Howell Education Association, and a board member of the Michigan Education Association; and he’s spearheaded the efforts that led to the creation of Howell’s Countryside Veterinary Dog Park and Parker Skate Park.
In recognition of all that Manor means to the community, Howell found fit to bestow upon him its two highest honors — 2011 Citizen of the Year, and Grand Marshal of the 2022 Fantasy of Lights Parade, which is set to step off on Friday, Nov. 25.
As he settled in for the interview for this piece, he didn’t want to talk about any of that, though: Manor wanted to talk about the community to which he’s dedicated the past six decades, and his hopes for its future.
“Howell is unique,” Manor said. “Think about the communities down I-96 with no core, just a name, like Novi and Wixom. Where is their core?”
To Manor, Howell’s core is its historic downtown, the place in which people connect with friends and family, where they can be part of something larger than themselves, a state of community grace, so to speak, made possible with healthy activities of commerce.
When you consider Manor’s dual careers — that of a teacher, and that of a council member — it’s easy to understand how the first inspired and benefited the second.
Manor’s path to the Howell City Council began in 1998, when he retired from Howell High School after teaching history for 32 years.
“I was a mean, scruffy teacher,” Manor said. “I was one of the hardest, and I was pretty good.”
While a teacher, Manor did some volunteer work and was involved in several organizations that allowed him to connect with others and work on community building.
The year he retired from teaching — 1998 — was the year of what he called the “Mike Herman fiasco,” when the Howell City Council — under the thrall of a couple of its members — orchestrated the firing of popular City Manager Mike Herman. The firing included a hastily called meeting on Labor Day that the rogue council members hoped no one would attend, but which instead drew hundreds of Herman supporters. The public outcry against Herman’s firing only prolonged the agony of his ouster for a month.
Herman’s job couldn’t be saved; his firing fractured both the council and the community. To this day, I maintain that those pushing for Herman’s firing couldn’t and didn’t understand how to be effective council members, and they didn’t realize that governing from a place of personal grievance rather than concern for the greater good would break the city, not build it.
With an upcoming election in 1999, the hunt was on for people willing to run who could be effective in both guiding the city and aiding in healing it after the battering it had suffered.
At about the same time, as a retired Steve Manor was thinking about what he wanted to do next, he got a call from “a very important person in town,” who asked whether he had ever thought of running for council. Manor had. Manor did. And Manor won.
“That was pretty exciting for a history teacher,” Manor said.
(And in a beautiful example of karma reigning supreme, voters broomed the instigators of the Herman firing in that same election.)
For the next 23 years, Manor served as the epitome of what a non-partisan council member should be, always looking beyond politics to get the win for the city.
Don’t get me wrong: The council is non-partisan, and Manor is by all accounts a Democrat, but that isn’t how he functioned serving the city, where his allegiance has always been, simply, Team Howell.
Manor’s approach to the council, as he described it, was always, “well, the city has problems, issues, and here are our options.”
“I’ve been somewhat of a thought leader and moderator of direction and goals and objectives,” Manor said. “I helped to build consensus in any way we could.”
Manor said his big crusade during his 23 years on council was to have the city invest in its infrastructure.
Howell’s core — a vibrant downtown, healthy neighborhoods, a thriving community — didn’t just happen. It’s taken some skillful leadership, and Manor credits former city manager Shea Charles, whom he described as “excellent” at his job.
“That’s not to say he did it alone,” Manor said. “Shea did it with a good mayor, and a good council that was supportive most of the time, and they worked to arrive at agreement. If anybody is more responsible for our process, I don’t know who it is.”
Since Manor first came to Howell, he’s seen the community change and grow. He’s had a front-row seat to the population explosion; the arrival of big box stores; the growth of Howell’s industrial base; the downtown redevelopment that saw the resurgence of independent shops and a now-thriving restaurant, bar and food industry. These are businesses that, coupled with special events, have drawn visitors, encouraged prospective residents, and built community.
“We’ve got a pretty good thing downtown,” Manor said.
He laughs when he talks about the perennial complaint about the “parking problem” downtown.
“What a great problem to have,” he said. “I mean that seriously, and what to do about it? We’ve hired a code enforcement officer and the results have been mixed.”
Manor said that there’s also been more code enforcement in the neighborhoods, and the city is using it to encourage residents to keep up their properties so Howell remains a “nice, neat, clean community that people like to live in.”
Manor’s pleased with the work the city has done to keep its downtown safe, and he stressed again how important it is to “build community,” most of which happens in Howell’s downtown. The idea of building community and connecting residents helped spur the creation of the city’s social districts, which encourage more people to be out on the streets at night.
“If everybody comes uptown and ends up in a bar, what’s going on outside?” Manor said. “All of those things are important to building a community. People are looking for connection.”
Manor said a couple things have surprised and pleased him during his time on the council.
The first is the reaction of Howell residents to the cancellation of Drag Queen Bingo, which had been scheduled for the 2021 Howell Melon Festival. The event was cancelled in a public brouhaha after a Republican-led culture-war campaign.
“It’s so easy to be cynical about the community,” Manor said. “I was pleasantly shocked to see so many people upset about the cancelling of Drag Queen Bingo. We had people who showed up at the council (meetings) and said, ‘why are you thinking about cancelling it? I already bought my tickets.’ I was so pleased with the supportive citizenship.” (You can read all our Drag Queen Bingo coverage by clicking here.)
Manor has also been happy to see that two once-controversial infrastructure tools are doing their jobs. While he might not advocate for the mini-roundabouts (or swerve-abouts or street donuts, as I’ve heard them called), Manor said he smiled every time someone approached the council and said, “They’re speeding on my street; can we get one of those?”
The same goes for the swales around town, the not-quite drainage ditches in certain neighborhoods that are, technically, infiltration basins to manage water runoff.
Manor said that one of the biggest critics of the swales (“one of the yellers,” he called this person) came back to a council meeting to say that the roundabouts work, and the swales work, and “I don’t get flooded anymore.”
Those are the kinds of conversations Manor enjoys. He said he’s had dozens of them with people to explain the purpose of swales, and how they work to drain water, and how the roundabouts help to control traffic, increasing driver attentiveness and reducing speed.
As to the future, Manor wonders who will replace him on council. And then, in true Manor form, he asked me for suggestions as to who I thought could replace him.
He said he’s leaving the city in good hands, that it’s functioning well, and that current City Manager Erv Suida and his staff are going a great job.
In all, Manor said he’s had “two pretty good careers.”
He hopes he’s remembered as a “pretty good city council member” who “very adequately represented the community in a broad sense.”
“Howell is a unique community that has a lot of growth left in it,” Manor said. “I plead with the community to support its continued growth and prosperity.”
He reminds all of us who live in Howell to think about those communities “down 96” that have names but no “core.”
“Howell is unique,” he said. “Preserve it. Adapt to change. Feed it. Support it.”
Lead photo: Manor enjoys time with his granddaughter and son.
