Holland, Michigan is one of the top destinations along Michigan's West Coast. And there's no one to better represent them than Mayor Nathan Bocks. In this episode, we talk about what makes Holland great, the supportive community around this city, and what you can expect when you visit this great city.

Links:

City of Holland, Michigan Website

Mayor Bocks Facebook Page

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And we know that if a community's gonna continue

to move forward, it continue.

It needs to continue to grow and to change.

We can't just sit and go, you know what?

We're fine exactly the way that we.

We never want to change from where we are.

Because if you're not moving forward, you're dying.

And this community tends to recognize that.

Hello everyone.

Welcome back to Ordinary People, Extraordinary Things.

I'm your host, Cliff DuVernois.

Today I'm kicking off a four-part series on the beautiful city of Holland.

And we're lucky enough to get a slice of time with the Mayor of Holland,

and that would be Mayor Nathan Bocks.

Mr.

Mayor, how are you?

I'm wonderful.

Thanks for having me today, Cliff.

Thanks for having us in here.

So why don't you tell us a little bit about where you're

from and where you grew up?

Absolutely.

I actually didn't grow up in Holland.

I grew up in the center of the state in Mount Pleasant.

Bounced around a little bit, but that's where I graduated from high school.

Uh, and then came to Hope College here in Holland, Michigan.

Met a local girl, got married, and settled down and have been

here since the mid 1980's.

This with all stories, sometimes they just start with there was a

that's right.

She captured my heart.

And we've been married now, 31 years.

So now you've actually built up, you've

got a lawyer practice here.

That's an area.

And you've At some point in time you decided to throw your

hat into the political ring.

Why did you decide to that?

I did.

I was always involved in the community.

I started out as a community volunteer at, our local Lake Shore.

Our local Habitat for Humanity affiliate, was on, over the course of the last 20

years on 15 different boards, committees, and commissions, from the library

to hospice, to the Tulip Time board.

I was actually the chair of the Tulip Time Festival for the 85th Tulip Time.

And really for a long time thought about the idea of being the mayor of Holland,

but really wasn't ready to do it.

Both in terms of, I had a law practice and a young family.

But a few years ago I realized our youngest daughter was gonna

be headed to Michigan State.

She's a senior at Michigan State this year.

And my wife is a school teacher, 33 years teaching.

She's gonna be retiring this spring.

And my wife looked at me and said, if you wanna do this mayor thing,

you got a window of time to do it.

So as a new empty nester and somebody who I knew my wife was gonna be

retiring in a few years, I decided to throw my hat into the ring and I won.

And so I've been the mayor of Holland now for three years.

I'm in the middle of my second two year term.

I'm up for reelection again in November and running for that third term.

And absolutely love the job.

In my mind, this is the greatest job of in the world.

It's, there's no better job than being the mayor of the greatest city in the world.

Ooh.

Okay.

we'll explore that claim in just a second.

What I wanna do is circle back, cuz you were talking about how

you've been on all of these boards.

Obviously, community involvement is something you are passionate about.

Where does that come?

I'm not sure.

My, my folks were teachers, educators.

My dad was involved in some board kinds of things.

But even as a student in high school, I was the student body president

and involved in youth in government.

And for me, that's always just been a passion to give back to the community.

The mayor of Holland, that job is a part-time job.

As you've mentioned, I'm a full-time attorney.

And it actually costs me money to be the mayor of Holland.

I do get paid, to be the mayor.

But I get paid $13,000 a year to be the mayor of this great city.

But the amount of time that I spend for that, $13,000.

I could be making a whole lot more money as an attorney.

But I think it's really important for all of us to give the, what we have, our gifts

and our talents back to our community.

I'm a government geek.

I really like the government aspect.

I've been a tour guide for this, for the Tulip Time Festival for 30 years.

So I really like to promote the community as well.

And those are two things that are really important when you're

the mayor of a small town.

You need to understand how government works and how the system works so

that you can move projects forward.

But you also need to be the promoter in chief of your community.

And I really relish that role in Holland.

So now you step in your role as mayor.

What were some of the challenges that you came that maybe that you had

inherited from previous administrations or something along those lines?

I'm blessed to be standing on the shoulders of giants.

We have had great leadership in this community for many years.

But I was elected, first elected in November of 2019.

was just understanding the job, getting my feet under the ground.

You drink from a fire hose for those first few months.

And then in February of 2020, just three months after I was elected, COVID hit.

Yes, and the whole world turned upside down.

And so all of those things that we knew and all of those systems that were in

place just got thrown out the window.

And so what we did as a small community is, is looked at what our situation was.

And we said, you know what?

Every single day we're gonna make the best decisions that we can,

based on the best information that we have available at the moment.

And we don't have a health department here.

We don't have health experts here in Holland.

So we relied on the state and the federal government and the county to

provide us with that health information.

But we worked very hard to be good leaders within the community

and to provide a sense of calm.

We started right out almost the, at the very beginning, let the, in mid-March

when the whole world shut down, we started doing a series of mayor messages

that were referred to as fireside chats.

Where I would do a, a video every Tuesday and every Friday letting the community

know what was happening, what changes were in place, what they could expect.

And we actually received several awards and a lot of accolades for the way that

we handled the pande, the pandemic here.

And our philosophy at the time was, calm, confident, competence.

And we just hammered that throughout the entire pandemic.

And Holland did really well compared to other communities.

We didn't lose a lot of businesses.

We really kept our heads about us.

And we came through, matter of fact, the summer of 2020 and the summer of

2021, were some of the best summers our local businesses and restaurants

saw in their entire history.

Because we as a community rallied together to be able to support

each other through that pandemic.

So that was the biggest challenge, that I've had to deal with as mayor.

Now, coming out of that, we're dealing now with kind of the regular

operations of government, but have a, an awful lot of transformational

projects going on in the city as well.

Cool.

Cool And I wanna make sure that we dedicate some time

to talk about those as well.

So when you're talking about Holland faired very well, you and I were talking

before I hit the record button about how there's the tourism side of Holland.

There's also a manufacturing side of Holland.

There's economic development.

Let's talk briefly about the tourism side of Holland.

So talk to us a little bit about that.

Where do you see that going?

Yeah.

Holland has always been considered a a big tourists community.

One, because we're on the shores of beautiful Lake Michigan.

We also have a wonderful inland lake here as well, Lake Macatawa.

And we're known for the Tulip Festival.

You know that in May every single year, the tulips bloom in Holland, Michigan.

We have four and a half million tulips in the ground just

starting to sprout out now.

So I encourage people to come and visit us.

Those first couple of weeks of May.

We'll have all kinds of gorgeous tulips and and activities going on.

And that is a real economic driver for the community.

In 2015, we did an economic, impact survey in terms of what money does

Tulip Time bring into the city?

And it was determined in 2015 that, Tulip Time over the course

of a 10 day festival, brings 48 million of new economic activity.

That's awesome.

That's a lot of money for a, a city of 33,500 people.

And that those are dollars that would not be spent in this community otherwise.

So that's a real driver for that, just beginning of the summer.

And we have folks then that, that come to our beaches that enjoy our

great town, our great downtown, and our great activities that happen.

Spring, summer and fall.

And we'll talk in a little bit about some great things that we've got coming

now for the winter season as well.

But Holland has always been known as that tourist community, especially

because of the Tulip Time Festival.

Festival now for the money that's coming in

during that particular time.

and I'm asking this question because I know that there are some

communities out there that seem to hang their hat on one festival a year.

And it seems like that's where 80% of the revenue comes from.

It's from a two week period.

Mm-hmm.

,,Talk to us a little bit more about other events that are going on throughout

the year to help keep the economy going.

Yeah, we've got an incredible downtown group and I

know that you're gonna be talking in some of the other series.

One with Tulip Time.

And Tulip Time works closely with our visitors bureau.

And then we also have what's called our principal shopping district.

which is our downtown merchants have an association that works together

to do projects throughout the year, in activities throughout the year.

And we try every month or so to have something going on in the

community to bring people in.

Whether it's Girlfriends Weekend in the spring, whether it's ice sculptures

in the wintertime, whether it's Fall Fest, to try to drive people into the

community to get those heads in beds.

But we have a major attraction here.

And that's the Lake Michigan Beach, and that's the Lake Macatawa waterfront.

And so people come with their boats, they want to stay at cottages in the area.

They want to stay, in the hotels in the area.

To enjoy what West Michigan has to offer in the summertime.

And that makes it very easy for people to come in.

And what it does then is it drives people into our shops, into our restaurants.

And if you haven't been downtown, we have one of the best downtowns

anywhere in the country.

And as you drive through, the biggest complaint that people

have is it's hard to find parking.

And we have free parking everywhere in the downtown Holland area.

So you never have to pay to park.

And we have a couple of great, parking structures just about

a block off from downtown.

And one of the biggest challenges we have is trying to train

people to go, you know what?

You can walk one block to get to downtown Holland from that parking structure.

So there's always parking available.

It just might not be right in front of the exact place that you were headed.

Now we covered a little bit about the tourism side.

What I'd like to do is start poking around the manufacturing side.

of Holland as well.

Cuz I have to say I kind of like this like multi segment approach.

It's not like Holland is purely driven by a tourism industry, but you

have these other industries as well.

So talk to us about the manufacturing

We absolutely do.

We, and we've always been a manuf, manufac manufacturing community.

We're, I like to say we're a community that makes things.

Historically we've been known for boat building.

The Chris Craft Corporation was located here.

The old mahogany runabouts were made here in Holland, Michigan.

We're also a center of office furniture manufacturing with

the Hayworth Corporation.

Herman Miller is located here.

And, Steelcase in the Grand Rapids area.

So we've got a lot of office furniture manufacturing.

Also, Baker Furniture was located here, so find Home Furnishings.

The Howard Miller Clock Company located Yes, located right here.

So beautiful grandfather clocks as well.

And we have, for years been a, tier two and tier three

automotive manufacturing company.

We make the sun visors here.

We make your headliners.

We make your armrest.

We make your trip computers.

We make the mirrors for your automobiles here in glass for your automobiles.

And, in the last 10 years or so, we've started to make

batteries for electric vehicles.

the LG Energy Solution Company has been located here, in Holland for

about a decade making batteries.

And just in the last year or so, they have decided to quintuple

the size of their facility here.

that's a fivefold increase, a 1.9 billion investment, in the city of Holland.

1 million square feet, 1200 new jobs, 10 million in a revolving fund for housing.

Cuz housing is a challenge for us, like it is for many places.

Ottawa County is the fastest growing county in the state of Michigan.

Holland is the biggest city in Ottawa County.

And so we see a lot of that growth here as well.

So we are destined to be, an a center of automotive manufacturing.

Because in electric car, the heaviest component, the most expensive

component in that car is the battery.

And so now that the batteries are being made here, we're starting to

see more tier two and tier three manufacturers for electric vehicles

locating here because they want to be close to where that battery is made.

We also make ice cream.

Your listeners are probably familiar with Hudsonville ice cream.

Hudsonville Ice creams made right here in Holland, Michigan.

They have the largest walk-in freezer in North America here in Holland.

We also make more lasagna here with request foods, frozen lasagna.

We make more frozen lasagna than anywhere else in the world

right here in Holland, Michigan.

During the pandemic, and as I said, we fared very well when other communities

were seeing a drop in development, we had 500,000 square feet of new

commercial construction start in Holland, Michigan during the pandemic.

Last year in 2022, we had 2.7 billion of new investment in Holland, Michigan.

We are a city on the move.

And remember, we're only 33,500 people.

So we do have surrounding townships that are absorbing some of that as well.

But we're seeing the vast majority of that is done right here.

Another great example, Tommy Car washes.

If you've ever seen the automated car washes made here, designed

here, shipped all over the world from little Holland, Michigan.

That's awesome.

We're gonna explore some of these, some of these things when we come back

from our break to thank our sponsors.

We'll see you in a few minutes.

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Okay.

Hello everyone.

Welcome back to Ordinary People, Extraordinary Things.

I'm talking today with Mayor Bocks out of the city of Holland in Michigan.

Mayor, before the break you were talking about really all this

wonderful industry that is coming here.

What I'd like to do is take a step back and explore a

little bit about the history.

Now, has Holland always been a city of tourism and manufacturing, or did it start

out as tourism and then manufacturing joined it or how did did that work?

work Originally it was manufacturing.

the tourism piece of it started.

we had been around the turn of the century 125 years ago, a place where

people would come from Chicago and St.

Louis and Detroit and spend the summer.

And then in the late 1920s is when the tour, when the

Tulip Time Festival started.

And that drove a lot of the tourism through the thirties, forties, fifties,

sixties, seventies and eighties.

And now we're seeing a lot of that beach tourism that's happening as well.

We've got some projects that are happening in the city of Holland

to make Holland rather than just a three season destination,

but a four season destination.

As a city, we are very forward thinking and I'm talking about both the people

that live here, but also as a government.

We're really very forward thinking.

Our philosophy is that public investment can then create and become a driver for

private investment in the community.

And we've got some great projects that we've been working on.

Some that have already passed and are on the drawing board and

are in the implementation phase.

And a couple of others that we're still waiting for some approvals

along the line and hoping that they're gonna come to fruition.

But just in an example, one of the great tourism based ones that we're doing, is

we are going to be building a world class ice skating park here in the downtown area

that we're gonna be breaking ground for in May, just after the Tulip Time Festival.

And the impetus of it, that's a great story.

The impetus of this project was a retired school teacher.

There's a retired school teacher in town, and he's in his mid eighties.

He realized a few years ago that he had more money than he thought that he needed.

He never married, never had kids, and he sat down with his banker.

And I can share this story cuz he's shared it many times.

Gentleman's name is Frank Cry.

His banker said, Frank, you're a millionaire.

Frank goes, I can't be a millionaire.

I'm a retired school teacher.

And he goes, no, you are.

And he goes, I don't need a million dollars.

And so he came to the city.

Yeah.

And he said he came to the city and he said, if you get going on an outdoor

ice skating rink, before I pass away, I will give you the first million dollars.

So a retired school teacher donated a million dollars to the city to, for

this new ice skating rink project.

It's gonna be not just a pond device, but there's also gonna be a ribbon

ice that goes out into the park.

Frank said he wanted curling.

There's gonna be curling.

Frank said there wanted to be Hi.

He wanted there to be hot chocolate.

There's gonna be hot chocolate.

There's gonna be skate rental.

It is going to be for a city of this size, again, the best skating facility

that you've seen with chilled ice.

So be able to skate four to five, months out of the year.

As you may know, we have heated streets and sidewalks in the downtown area.

Yes, we do.

So the area around the rink will be heated as well.

There'll be heated benches and fireplaces.

And that'll be done, ready to skate for the winter of 24 25.

I really pushed hard to get it for the next winter season.

, But I'm sure as everybody who's listening knows there are issues with

supply chain and there issues with getting the workers and all of those

things that we had to push it back.

But we're gonna start construction right away this summer.

And then we'll be ready to go for that, that, in a year and a

half, for the ice skating there.

And what that's going to do is not only be a great amenity for the people that

live here, but what it's gonna do is it's gonna extend the stays for people

who come here who may have come for an overnight and go, you know what?

I can stay and I can skate and I can do not only the things I was gonna do.

But these additional things as well.

So that's one of the things that we've got going that we know is absolutely

gonna be a real driver for tourism.

One of the great economic development projects that we have going that

passed just this past year is our city.

Not only do we provide electricity, we have our own board of public

works where we provide electricity.

We provide water.

We take care of wastewater.

And we've been doing broadband internet on a limited basis in the downtown area.

We just passed a millage to provide a gigabit speed fiber

broadband internet system.

That'll run past every single address in the city.

Just Board of Public Works.

Just voted yesterday to purchase the first materials.

We're looking at construction starting on that in the fall.

And within about a year and a half, every single person in the city of

Holland would be able to sign up for a gigabit speeding internet up and

down for about 50 to $60 a month.

All in.

And that is gonna be a project that's gonna be an incredible

driver, not only for business, but for education, and for tourism.

What we've looked at during the pandemic is we want to be a city of

choice or a community of choice for people who say, I no longer have to

live in Los Angeles or in Chicago.

They get to live here.

The mayor loves that phrase, and I get to live here.

That's part of that driver of, we love this town.

We have a great pride in our community and we want others to know that

as well, and we wanna create that.

So there's two things that are going on.

Third one that we have that's actually up for a vote in coming up

in May, we are a lakefront community, but our downtown is not connected

directly to the lakefront like a lot of our neighboring communities are.

Grand haven's right on the water.

Saugutuk right on the water.

Muskegon's right on the water.

South Haven's right on the water.

Holland has always been a little disconnected from the water, partly

because we are an industrial community and we've got great industrial uses there.

But we've been involved in a five year pro process asking the community

what they would like to do with some waterfront property that became available.

we, as I said, we generate our own electricity.

Four years ago, five years ago now.

We, put our own, put a brand new, dual stage gas fired electric generating plant

in and decommissioned our old coal-fired plant that sat on the waterfront.

That space is now available.

In going through this process, we are going to be creating, a new,

if this, if it passes and the mil and the vote's gotta pass to allow

the city to sell the property.

A marina restaurant, condominiums, ice, ice cream shop, all right on

the waterfront, connected right to downtown, including a cruise ship dock.

So we are looking at having more opportunities to connect downtown

to the waterfront and the waterfront to downtown here in holland.

So lots of things going on.

That's just three

Sweet moses

So let's talk a little bit, cuz you made this comment before and I wanna

make sure that we really exposed, you made a comment about how there's

some things that are in place to make Holland a true four season destination.

Absolutely.

Is the ice skating rink part of that?

It is.

It is.

Okay.

It is.

So we have the largest.

Already have the largest snow melt system in North America.

We've got five miles of sidewalks that are heated with

wastewater from our power plant.

We've got about a mile of streets that are heated.

Yes, we heat them enough so that it melts the snow in the downtown area.

We are gonna, that's on our eighth street, which is our main street.

This coming year we're gonna be expanding that system into onto

sixth Street, which is where the new ice skating rink is gonna be.

So two blocks off from town connecting through, and putting.

As I said, we have public investment that we hope then drives private investment.

We are investing as a city, 9 million in new infrastructure projects

in the downtown area this summer.

We're already starting to see, and that's that's in addition to what it's

gonna, the, about nine or 10 million it's gonna cost to build the skating rink.

But we're looking at getting donations for the skating rink

and that's going really well.

We're a community that gives and supports.

And I am very hopeful as mayor that the public's gonna come out and

say, we are going to donate the money that's necessary to build this

world class skating facility city.

You do the infrastructure for the roads and the sidewalks and

expand our downtown to the north.

And then all of the properties in that area that used to be industrial properties

or properties that were underused are starting to see additional investment,

which is gonna allow for that great growth that we need in Holland, Michigan as well.

needed.

Man,

that's

absolutely

credible.

Yeah, it's, we have a lot of very smart people in this community

that are really dedicated to making Holland the best place that it can be.

And as I said, I've got the greatest job in the world.

I get to work with all of these amazing folks, some of which you'll

be meeting in these other episodes.

As I said off, off mic, we are, we're all friends with one another.

We're a big enough community that we can do really big things.

But we're a small enough community that we all know each other.

And we like each other.

And we work well with one another.

And we realize that there's an incredible value in us getting along

and all rowing in the same direction.

And this has been a, a great time in the last 10, 12 years in the city of

Holland where we have been doing that.

And it's shown incredible benefits.

In speaking of community, cuz this is something

that I have experienced.

It seems you got communities like yours that are just, embracing the change.

Let's embrace the future.

New jobs coming in.

People want to po like you said, it was, they want to what?

Quintuple.

Quintupling.

The size of the battery plant.

There you go.

The battery plant.

And I know that there are other communities out there that if

somebody comes in and wants to open up a plant, bring jobs to the

area, the community poo-poos it.

They're like, you're not coming in here.

What is it that makes that you feel anyways, that the community

here just embraces this?

Yeah, we recognize that there, there are additional ripple effects

and value that comes from those things.

It's not only the additional jobs, it's the additional tax

revenue that comes in as well.

And we know that if a community's gonna continue to move forward, it continue.

It needs to continue to grow and to change.

We can't just sit and go, you know what?

We're fine exactly the way that we.

We never want to change from where we are.

Because if you're not moving forward, you're dying.

And this community tends to recognize that.

Now not everybody loves the idea of change.

We're like any other community where there's some folks that

said, Hey, how are we going to possibly absorbed 1200 new jobs.

We all, our manufacturers and employers are already looking

for employees to come in.

How are we gonna be able to provide the housing for these folks?

And we look at each one of these projects from a holistic approach.

One of the reasons why we're putting a skating rink in downtown, one of

the reasons why we're doing broadband, one of the reasons why we're looking

at additional waterfront development is that we know those things

make a community more attractive for people to want to live here.

And so that makes it easier for our employers to find those

additional employees that they need.

We also work hand in hand with the development community in giving them

incentives to try to build the kind of housing that holland wants and needs

City of Holland sees itself as a partner in that economic development.

And so we work closely with Lakeshore Advantage, which is our local economic

development corporation, with both private developers, but also places

like Habitat for Humanity is a very important partner in the community.

We have another housing, a non-profit housing organization

called Jubilee Ministries, which is, which we work hand in hand with.

Dwelling Place outta Grand Rapids we work with.

Because we know that by working together, we're gonna be able to create

all facets that are needed in order to be able to maintain that economic

that

equity.

And it's not just bringing in new

employees to cover the plants.

I was reading a couple articles online about some incentive programs.

You got to get more teachers to come area the area.

We do.

And that's a, and our education system is phenomenal as well.

Holland.

Holland as a city is landlocked.

The Holland Public schools are landlocked.

We don't have extra land to grow.

And Holland, the public schools recently I've had a difficult time attracting

teachers to come into the area.

And this is, again, part of that great, giving community that we have an anonymous

donor donated about three quarters of a million dollars to the local schools.

I know who does that?

Who does that?

three mil, three quarters of a million dollars to provide.

Scholarships are actually grants to teachers who choose to purchase a home

within five miles of the school district.

So they get a $25,000 additional down payment toward their home if they purchase

a home within five miles of the district.

A.

And then stay there with for another five years.

And I talked to the superintendent of schools again, mayor

and the superintendent of schools know each other well.

We all know each other well in Holland.

I said, you know what about what happens after five years?

He goes, once, once they're here for five years, they're hooked.

They're not leaving.

He goes, so we're not, we got a nice skating rink.

And we had, we got all these things going on.

So they're not worried about that aspect of it at all.

And it has become a game changer for the Holland Public Schools in attracting and

retaining great talent to teach our kids.

And we know that's an incredibly important piece here as well.

People want to live here.

But they need to be able to afford to live here.

And so we've gotta find great ways to be able to do that.

And as I.

You know that $750,000 gift to the schools, the million dollar gift from

Frank Cry for the ice skating rink, which was immediately followed by another

million dollar gift from the jury's family toward the ice skating rink.

We're at about four and a half million dollars in fundraising for

the ice skating rink right now.

We also received a million and a half dollar gift for our nature

center in the city of Holland.

We also received a

5 million gift that's gonna go toward building a new rec center in the next

five to 10 years, and I'm gonna get myself It's, It's it's amazing to me and it,

and with people having a, an inherent distrust and dislike of government,

that for the city of Holland, people come and without us asking in a lot of

cases, go, Hey, here's a large amount of money I would like to have the city

of holland use to make the city better.

People trust this city because we do things so well.

Great.

Another great story I'll share you with you.

We had a gentleman, again, an anonymous donor was at the local Ford dealer.

And he was getting, he was buying an A Ford F-150 Lightning a hundred

thousand dollars pickup truck.

And he was right at the end signing the paperwork.

And then somebody said to him something about the towing capacity of the truck.

And he goes, oh, that doesn't quite meet my needs for the towing capacity.

I guess I'm gonna have to shift over to the internal combustion engine one.

And the salesman said, okay, well, I'll tear up this agreement

that we got for the electric one and we'll get you the other one.

He goes, no.

He tossed the keys to the salesman.

He goes, give the truck to the city of Holland.

and I'll buy the electric one for myself.

That's

cool.

Just completely out of the blue.

And so now our police department is using that as part of their fleet.

And part of the promotion that they do, they go to summer events with an

ice cream trailer, to give ice cream to kids to be able to create that

kind of great relationship between the police department and the community.

And again, it's one of those things where every single week at a city council

meeting, we have a list of gifts that we've received from the community.

And it is amazing to me as a mayor that people say, we'd like to

give you money to be able to make this community a better place.

That's just what Holland is about.

Mr.

Mayor, I could sit here all afternoon and just being trans by this.

So I've, I'm really enjoying these stories.

If somebody wants to, connect with you and follow what it is

you're doing, either online, the website, what would be the best

place for

um,

The mayor loves his social media.

The, I have my own, I'm, at Mayor Bocks.

And then, but the city of Holland has an incredible

social media department as well.

So if you go to, just look up City of Holland.

We've got great stuff that's out there.

City of holland.com.

and then you'll be talking with, there's tulip time.com and there's holland.org.

All kinds of great places.

One little story I'll tell you.

I'm not much of a TikTok guy.

I'm in my mid fifties.

I don't understand it.

But we had a couple of college interns working for the city last year who were

dedicated, who they were tasked with beefing up the city's TikTok account.

And they convinced the mayor to paint his face up like a minion

And recorded it.

Yeah.

That and, I never would've believed it.

Four and a half million views on TikTok for the City of Holland.

And I said, I don't understand why it's funny.

I don't get it.

But what we did is we leveraged these college students to

beef up that TikTok account.

And what it did is it drove people then to all of the informational

stuff that we have out there as well.

Sure.

And so we're using all of these tools that we have available.

So check us out on social media.

Our TikTok account is great.

Our Instagram, our Facebook, our twitter accounts are great.

As I said, I'm Mayor Bocks or look for city of holland.

Mr.

Mayor, it's been great just chatting with you today.

I'm gonna have to come back because I wanna follow up on all these

great programs that are going on.

we'd love to have you come, definitely come

back in, winter of 2024, so you can check out the ice skating rink.

And we'll see you at Waterfront Holland and you can enjoy the

great broadband as as well.

And for our audience, for all the links that Mayor Bocks talked

about today, you can see them by going to total michigan.com, clicking on this

profile and finding all the links there.

While you're there, don't forget to put in your email address

and join our weekly newsletter.