Dennis Henderson retired Jan. 19 after serving 22 years as Clive city administrator, ending a career in public life that grew from curiosity.

Nearly three decades before he arrived in Clive — a town, he noticed, that lacked a downtown — Henderson was a regular at Garner City Council meetings. When a council seat opened up, he was appointed, in part just because he always attended meetings out of curiosity.

He later was elected to the seat and then pursued a degree in public administration as an “older than average student” at Iowa State University.

From the beginning he has followed a singular theme: “You’re out there on a daily basis to protect and enhance people’s quality of life. Government is there to take care of services that the private sector can’t or won’t do. So for me, it’s an honor to be able to protect people’s quality of life and to work to improve that.”

Henderson was born in Newton, where his father was an accountant for Maytag. The company also had employed his grandparents, aunts and uncles. At age 7, his dad entered the ministry and was named a pastor in Clarion. From there, the family moved to Climbing Hill, then Britt, where Henderson graduated from high school before entering Iowa State University for the first time.

Those early years left an impression.

“Growing up in a parsonage is quite a heritage from the perspective that you see everything from the poorest in society to the richest, those who have the least to those who have the most, whether it’s in smarts or money or possessions or whatever,” Henderson said. “We learned several times to make friends. Interpersonal relationships really are a way to develop your emotional intelligence. There are a lot of parallels; dad worked for church boards, I worked for city councils.”

After his first year at Iowa State, Henderson took a job at Winnebago to earn money for the next year of classes. The company promoted him to production control coordinator, and “I decided maybe I’ll ride this horse for a while.”

He lived in Garner, attended city council meetings, started Unicover, which manufactured toppers for pickups, opened a bakery that had a retail outlet in Forest City. As mentioned, he was appointed, then elected to the Garner City Council.

Henderson’s first job in city administration was in Dwight, Ill., where he worked from 1988 to 1992, when he became city administrator in Nevada. Snyder & Associates served as the city engineer for Nevada. Company co-founder Dennis Snyder persuaded Henderson to apply for an opening as city administrator in Clive, where the company also acted as city engineer.

“Dennis Snyder raked me over the coals, nicely, wanting to know why I hadn’t applied for the Clive job,” Henderson said. “He thought way outside the engineering box. So we visited over the weekend, drove around Clive, and I handed off my application on Friday of the deadline.”

He started work as Clive city administrator in January 1996. He hasn’t once thought the lack of a downtown district is a detriment to the city.

These days, Henderson is catching up on projects around the house and playing “go-to driver for the grandchildren,” he said. He remains involved in public affairs, working on recruitment of a full-time director for the Westcom Public Safety Dispatch Center and developing a request for proposals for a strategic planning facilitator for the regional operation.

A few days before his retirement, Henderson talked about his accomplishments — they’re not his, mind you, they were part of a team effort — and offered, with some friendly persuasion, advice to other city administrators.

What were his biggest accomplishments?
Of the city’s 116 full-time staff members when he left office, 106 were hired during those two-plus decades and continued working with the city an average of nearly 11 years, Henderson said. That is a point of pride for a man who gives others — mayors, city council members, staff — credit for virtually every achievement the city has notched since he came on board.

Some notable accomplishments include development of the city’s aquatic center and first library. When he arrived in the city, he said, “We didn’t even have a pencil for a library.”

The city has watched its pennies while developing City Hall out of the former Microware offices on 114th Street, developing parks and participating in a multi-city emergency notification network. Public art has been added to the city’s greenbelt along Walnut Creek. Through it all, property taxes have remained steady. 

“Clive has always been known for having a low property tax rate, but at the same time that is not the all in all,” Henderson said. “How are you using those funds, and are you adequately meeting the public’s needs and desires of the services they wish to get?”

Citizen surveys have shown the residents believe they are getting their money’s worth out of City Hall.

“The only thing they would like to have more of is DART service,” he said.

What didn’t he accomplish?
“It’s a continual metamorphosis. There are new regulations, new products, technology. That’s the fascinating thing about municipal management — it’s the typical snowflake job where no two days are alike. I can think I have my day planned out, but at the end of the day I might not have touched any of them because things came up, people stopped in, problems arose, emergencies happened, the creek decided to misbehave. It’s just a constant variety, so you have to be able to switch gears quickly and come back to what you were doing and switch again.”

Any advice for other city administrators?
“It applies to everybody who supervises or manages people, and that is that it’s extremely important how you make people feel. It’s not what you do, it’s not what you accomplish, it’s not the projects you got completed, it’s how you made people feel that they are going to remember you by. Were you a positive or were you a negative in their life? I think I learned that from my pastor dad. People perform the best when they’re happy and feeling positive about things. Accomplishments will come because of that.”

Parting words for former staff?
“I’ve been extremely blessed with the staff here in Clive, and they really work hard at going above and beyond on a daily basis. It’s a staff that thinks outside of the box. I think it all started with Dennis Snyder. He worked with staff, he wanted Clive to excel. [The City Hall] garden is a memorial to him. We really honor him. Willard Wray, Dean Dymond, Bart Weller were great department directors. It’s always to go above and beyond how we can do things better, more economically. How can we improve it? When you have staff who think that way, you always come in under budget. I would be a very dull individual if it weren’t for the staff who shined me up really well.