Christine Howard is the executive assistant to Athens-Clarke County Mayor Kelly Girtz, and her role consists of performing numerous daily tasks such as scheduling appointments, managing emails and assisting other offices.
Q: How would you describe your role on a day-to-day basis?
A: Busy? Being the executive assistant to the mayor, I handle all of his scheduling, majority of his emails, all of our invoices, proclamations, scheduled meetings with different government and public officials, telephones and also assist the assistants in the manager’s office, the attorney’s office and the Clerk of Commission’s office — and greet people that may just walk in off the street.
Q: What are the main duties and responsibilities of Mayor Girtz?
A: If you ask the public, it’s everything. His main duty is to work with the commission to get different ordinances across, to make sure that contracts are signed, to set the agenda for the mayor and commission meetings. So that’s his main thing, but I would say he really loves walking and greeting people while he’s picking up trash. He does it a lot, and whoever he sees while he’s picking up the trash that Monday morning, they’re calling me, “I met the mayor on Saturday” or “I saw him on the Oconee Greenway picking up trash, and he said to call you for a meeting.”
Q: How does he best reflect the community?
A: He tries to bring this government forward in a positive way, and if he achieves that goal, he will get a little recognition, but when he doesn’t achieve it, he’ll get a lot of negative things. But he really works hard, in my opinion, maybe in some other citizens’ opinions, to make sure that everybody is accounted for, whether you are unhoused or whether you’re a millionaire. He makes a positive impact within this community and within that person. He’ll meet with anybody, he’ll talk with anybody and try to find a solution to whatever the problem may be. So he’s just, he’s a pretty good guy.
Q: What do you want the public to take away from his time in office?
A: Well, he’s had a lot of stuff happen, actually being a commissioner and then going in to be a mayor. I saw him as a commissioner, and he was passionate about his district. And as being a mayor —affordable housing, the youth, the different programs and making sure that different agencies are able to get funding so that they can continue to assist the public. I’ve been in this government 30 years, and I worked 19 years in the sheriff’s office and I worked seven years in the Clerk of Commission. Out of the 30 years, he’s the best part of a supervisor you can ask for. He listens; he understands. He’s the type of person, with any government employee, I would say, that you can tell that you made a mistake, and he’ll say, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll fix it.” So far, in my opinion, he’s the best mayor that Athens has had.
Comments trimmed for length and clarity.
Katherine Lee is a journalism major in Reporting I covering city-county government in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.
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