Meet Anne Swager Wilson

Editor’s note: this transcript was automatically generated by a speech-to-text program.

You’re listening to Inside Lebo, a podcast giving you an inside look at Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, hosted by assistant municipal manager and municipal planner, Ian McMeans, and assistant public information officer and online editor, Stephanie Hacke.

Welcome back to Inside Lebo. I’m your host assistant municipal manager and municipal planner, Ian McMeans, and I’m assistant public information officer and online editor, Stephanie Hacke.

Joining us for today’s special episode is Mt. Lebanon’s newest Commissioner who has recently appointed to the vacant third Ward seat.

Absolutely, thank you Anne Swagger Wilson for joining us today. We really appreciate it

My pleasure.

So you were recently appointed, tell us why you’re interested in serving on the Commission and why you threw your hat into the ring.

I have a long history of being in the public realm more in the city of Pittsburgh, probably more than M. Lebanon, but also sometimes in Mt. Lebanon. And I was asked by several people, it was suggested that I go ahead and apply for the position because I have enough experience where walking into the seat.

Wasn’t You know, a really hard study, I’m pretty familiar with how local government works. And I’ve been around for a long time, so, Um, That’s why I threw my head into the ring. Well, we’re very glad that you did and congratulations on your appointment. Thank you, thanks. I’m learning a lot which is very fun.

That’s, that’s the best part about it, but that’s awesome. All sorts of people learning all about the things that Mt. Lebanon does. It’s amazing. It’s just incredible. Isn’t it goes into it? Yes, absolutely for sure. Well, tell us about your background a little bit. Where do you come from?

You know, previous jobs, accomplishments. All of that. Good stuff. Okay, well i started my career in pittsburgh as a banker, believe it or not. Um, and that’s where i learned finance. I also hated banking because i hated saying no and it seemed like the bank that i worked for which will remain unnamed only lent money to people who didn’t need it, which never made sense to me and just was not good for my personality.

So i went from there to staying home with my two, oldest children for a few years was pretty sure i was going to die of boredom. And so i decided to volunteer to work for A group that was called the washington road task force. Revitalization task force. It was an effort to try to revitalize Washington Road and i volunteered and very quickly was pulled in to doing almost of full-time job.

Helping set up the organization and all of those kind of things and then ultimately, it was hired as the first executive director on a part-time basis. And so i’m the one my group not me. Um, is who started the Boo. We used to call the Booville parade. Now, it’s called the pumpkin patch parade.

I guess i started light up night in Mt. Lebanon, which is now light Lebo and we started a very small farmers market. Now, all these things have grown and gotten much better than our initial tries, but yep, that was that group. That’s so cool. I love that. So a lot of the big community events that we have now are thanks to you and your efforts.

Well, but you know, I have to admit that my success is really come from all people. I work with if it were just me, never would happen. I always had um, great people that i worked with both volunteers and some paid staff here and there. So, That’s awesome. Tell me about the transition from banking to that role and how did you how did you go about that?

Well, it was it was interesting because it was back when the national trust. For historic preservation was starting. What was called the main street program? And they had their idea was that If you wanted your community, especially your business district to thrive, you had to work from the uniqueness of what it was.

So, Interestingly enough, it was about doing special events to bring people into town attracting, new businesses to your business district. And honoring the design of the buildings that were there, and i really have always liked buildings and the history of buildings. So, This was a natural fit for me.

I’m thinking banking just gives you a good background of finance. I mean it it helps you understand how the money comes in and how the money goes out and how to explain it. And so that was how i went from one to the other. I love that. So you made a huge impact on Mt. Lebanon and back in the day.

Are you from Mount Lebanon? What’s your background? No, no. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. But my family is from the state of Maine. Okay. So and they and they really my dad used to say we were just visiting and Cincinnati so I love it, haha. So how did you end up in Mt. Lebanon?

Um, I married into Mt. Lebanon. Okay, okay. You’re either born here, are you? Married and pretty much it, but now I’ve been here for. So I’ve been here, 43 years so I feel like I’m from Mt. Lebanon. This is becoming your community for sure. Yeah, I love myself. Okay.

Um, so you mentioned obviously your finance experience and now that we’re into the month of november, which is budget season in the municipality How do you feel that that kind of prepares you for working through the vastly comprehensive, municipal budgeting process? Well, that’s, that’s a good word for it.

It’s really incredible. The amount of detail that goes into coming up with a budget and, you know, like i said, Budgeting and finance is all about the money coming in and the money going out and there are never enough resources for everything everybody wants. So somehow you have to come up with a balance.

That you’re, you know, being careful with the money and spending it, the way this citizens, want it to be spent recognizing that. Every citizen is different from every other citizen so you can’t, please everybody 100% of the time but we do a pretty good job of it. I think with our budgeting it’s also such an open process, you know, any citizen can find out at any time, how we spend our money and how we raise our money, it’s right there for everybody.

Just very transparent. And shameless plug for a previous episode of Inside Lebo, people can check out our episode on the budget with finance director, Andrew McCreery, which was released last week. So we’re going to take a short break and we’ll be back with more from commissioner Anne Swagger Wilson.

And we’re back with more on Inside Lebo with this week’s special guest, Commissioner Anne Swagger Wilson who was recently appointed to fill the third ward seat that was vacated by Commissioner Leanne Foster. So, Commissioner Swagger Wilson. What are some of your hopes from Mt. Lebanon, in the years ahead.

I hope that we are able to preserve our history and to celebrate our history. I think one of the neatest things about Mt. Lebanon is our history. The way the town developed it’s it’s almost like a quilt. It’s kind of a patchwork of things that happened here and then some that happened here.

Um very very interesting. And it’s very fun to be walking down the street and thinking about the houses that are there some are newer, some are older who used to live in them. How did they come to be? I i love all those things. So you have a background in, um, working for a non-profit architecture as well.

I, i had the privilege of being the executive director of the american institute of Architects in pittsburgh for 27 years. Oh that’s so cool. That’s amazing. It was a wonderful job. It was you know they’re architects are just set fascinating interesting. Smart people the way they look at the world’s different than everybody else and it gave me a real appreciation, for the difference, design can make in everybody’s lives.

And, you know, it can contribute to the public safety in a community, uh, Just a numerous thing. So how does that change your view on lebo when you walk on the streets? And you’re talking about looking at the buildings and all of that when i always am trying to figure out what the insides look like?

You know what’s what’s the floor plan of that house? How is it constructed? I mean, there’s a there’s a house on orchard. I think it is that actually looks like it’s made from cobblestones. I mean, it’s so fascinating the materials that people came up with and then houses. Yeah, really.

That makes our houses very special around here. They are special because they’re such a big variety of them, right? We even have those little Spanish houses here in there. I love those. I know, I’ve always wondered the background of those. I think we’ve talked about that in our office at some point, where, those come from.

How did they get here? Yeah, yeah. It’s it’s really cool. And I know, you know, from recent experience that um, we’re doing public surveys as part of our comprehensive plan process and a lot of the feedback we’ve heard through that is that, you know, we asked the question, what do you like most about Mt. Lebanon, a lot of the responses, sort of the Character of our communities and character of our neighborhoods.

You know, and everything that goes into that too, right? The the sidewalks, the walkability, the tree line streets, the brick streets are fabulous. You know, all those things are just so beautiful thing and different i love it in my neighborhood. I live in lebanon hills and so part of it has brick streets, the older part, and you can see the line of demarcation where they started to put in fell and build houses in the 60s because those are all blacktop.

Yeah, it’s so interesting. Think about the names main entrance, park entrance, connecting road. I always think that the builder came in and thought, okay? This is going to be the main entrance into my plan. And this is going to be the entrance that goes down to the little park at the end because he wasn’t developed.

Yeah, and this road connecting, rose is going to connect the two and then the name stop. I don’t know. That’s true. So i’m we’re actually talking about the name as recently and where did they come from? How did they get there? But that’s just makes sense to me. So now i tell everybody that, that’s what i think happens and pretty soon that myth will probably turn into, you know, the truth.

Yeah, it’s my favorite road name in Mt. Lebanon. Like you just said right? You know, you can just imagine someone like, oh here’s here’s a big road here, here’s a big road here. What’s this one? Connects those two, i will call connecting her, right? And it stage, i love it.

Oh my goodness. Okay, um, so you i think you also kind of covered this one but um what is your favorite thing about Mount Lebanon? The history is my favorite thing, but probably the uniqueness of the town, you know? It’s just um, It’s such an interesting place to live.

It’s such an interesting way to see how it evolved as a town. I also like that it is somebody coined this phrase at one point that it was the most urban suburb and i like that about it. I like that our houses are Not on top of each other, but fairly close.

You know, your neighbors. You have a sidewalk a sidewalk to me is like, Up front door to your house if you’re sitting in your yard or gardening when someone’s walking by on the sidewalk. It’s pretty hard, not to say hello, because they’re right there. Now, if they’re out in the road, you know, they’re that much farther away, right next to you.

You have to say hello, and it makes it neighborly. That’s awesome. I love it. And all of this together, you’re on the historic preservation board as well. Is that correct? Well, but i have to step back from because oh my god. That’s what i was doing. Because awesome. Yeah.

Very cool. Yes. And they’re gonna, they’re working on a Seminar for residents to have residents, understand. The history of their home and how to preserve the character of their house, as opposed to blowing it up and putting, you know, some material that isn’t a good material for that house on it.

So i love that and i remember a few years back that historic board was involved with a design guide that we have on our website. Right now, they’re kind of give some A high level architecture overview to people who may not know a lot about architecture. But says my house looks like this and there’s some great pictures in there that you can kind of flip through me, like, oh, i have this on my house.

Okay, this is what it is and how to kind of maintain it, right? It’s really cool. Awesome. What is what are some of the challenges that you face in this new role? There’s so much to learn. That there’s such an incredible amount of things to learn. I’ve been going around on I guess what i’ll call listening tour.

Interviewing department heads staff leads, just to get a feel for what everybody does and i i tried to keep notes but i can’t even keep up. There’s just so much going on at any given moment, so i think that the biggest challenge is trying to learn it all and then trying to represent the people that do all the work in, you know, Be able to.

Explain what they do. Why they do it. Why decisions are made what these policies are for. Those things are hard because you know, people oftentimes have a very strong opinion. Yep, about the way something should be done. And yet, it can’t be done that way for a number of reasons.

So trying to learn all of that is daunting task. You’re doing all your research, then it sounds like just by meeting people and talking to people. Yes, learning about the community. And next, I want to hear from residents, so I’m talking to Mt. Lebanon staff now, but I’d like to hear from the residents, And if you want to reach me, you can either call me at 412-652-8289 or you can email me at [email protected]

Great. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today on the show. And, you know, we wish you the best of luck during your 10 years.

Commissioner absolutely. Thank you so much for being here. This episode of inside libel was produced by carry mango with team music by drew mono. And thanks also to Chris leaper from the Mt. Lebanon, public information office for the great artwork that we have for our show tune in again next time for another episode of Inside Lebo.

And thanks for listening to Inside Lebo produced by Mt. Lebanon’s public information office. Learn more about all things Lebo at mtlebanon.org or by following our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages.