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Michael R. Monfils
(1938 - )
Michael R. Monfils 1975 - 1979
Although his mother claimed that he was almost born on Walter Klimek's bus, Michael Monfils was born to Raymond P. "Mike" Monfils and Josephine E. "Jo" Monfils at St. Mary's Hospital in Green Bay, WI, on December 12, 1938. Jo was a school teacher who taught at Saints Peter and Paul Grade School for thirty-five years and Mike Sr. was a machinist for most of his adult life.
Mike attended Saints Peter and Paul Grade School, then Sacred Heart Seminary in Oneida, Wisconsin
He graduated from Saint Norbert College with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in philosophy and a commission as Second-Lieutenant in the United States Army.
Lt. Monfils served with the U.S. Army in Europe from 1961 to 1963 at Baumholder, Germany. From 1963 to 1967, he served in the U.S. Army Reserve in Chicago as the headquarters battery commander of an artillery battalion.
Mike attended one year of graduate school in philosophy at Loyola University, Chicago, and worked for the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan Chicago, Inc., until 1967. In that year, he returned to Green Bay to work in the sales department of Fort Howard Paper Company (now Georgia-Pacific). Later that year, he married Mary Peterson. They had two children, Kate Anne (Monfils) Best and Matthew Monfils.
Mayor Monfils and the City Council, 1975
Mike was elected to the joint office on the Green Bay City Council and the Brown County Board of Supervisors in 1972.
In 1975, he was elected Mayor of Green Bay. During his term of office "Mayor Mike" instituted a management system with regular staff meetings, goals and objectives, a complete classification and pay system, and the city's first personnel office.
Mayor Mike Monfils at the Port Plaza Mall grand opening ceremonies 1977.
In cooperation with private enterprise, the city built Phase 1, the Port Plaza Mall (now Washington Commons), of the first successful urban renewal project in the Midwest. Green Bay also adopted the plan and funding mechanism for Phase 2 which was subsequently completed. Under Mike's leadership the City also adopted its first comprehensive plan in fifty years and completely reassessed all property in the city for the first time in twenty years.
As Mayor, Mike also served as President of the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities. He lobbied the Wisconsin Legislature convincing them to build a major seven-story State Office Building in the center of downtown Green Bay.
Mayor Mike chose not to run for re-election in 1979 and taught as an adjunct professor of Local Government at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. In 1980, he was nominated by the Democratic Party to run for Congress from the Eighth District and lost.
Port Plaza Mall Grand Opening Ceremonies 1977
From 1980 to 1986, he served as a partner in Interface III Associates, Inc., which did consulting for city planning, cable television and radio broadcast communications. Mike also became and continues to be a labor mediator and arbitrator.
In 1986, he married Mary Timney and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. The following year the State of Ohio Employment Relations Board hired him to be one of the first two mediators for the public sector in Ohio. He and his associate began the program and over the next eleven years broadened the program to include facilitating interest-based bargaining, labor management committee effectiveness, and several other programs.
Port Plaza Mall was a hub of activity for all of Northeastern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan
In 1999, he retired and moved to Hayward, California, where his wife Mary was a Professor of Public Administration at California State University-Hayward. Mike continues to mediate labor disputes and sometimes teaches public sector labor negotiations and alternate dispute resolution. He occasionally does watercolor painting. Mike also belongs to the Society for the Preservation of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America and sings with the Westchester Chordsmen.
In the summer of 2002, Mike and Mary made another move, this time to Peekskill in the New York City area where Mary became the chairperson of the newly formed Political Science Department of Pace University. They have three grandchildren and four children between them.
Mike returns to Green Bay periodically to visit relatives and old friends. He likes to hear from "home town folks." He can be reached by email >>