Part II
“Is that illegal?”, my newest friend asks. “No”, I reply, “it’s just ridiculous and unprecedented”. My newest friend is several rows ahead of me at the moment as we bounce along at 500+ knots over the Rockies, on our way to SJC. I’ll never see my newest friend again, but he was standing next to me at the MSP gate and started asking questions about where I was off to. City manager of Seaside and village administrator of a small town in Wisconsin at the same time, I explained, which prompted the question.
Ridiculous and unprecedented. That would be a great business card. But my Poynette card is already pretty swell, with the John Prine lyric “a young man, from a small town, with a very large imagination” in place of an official title.
The joke, of course, is my very large imagination imagines me as a young man. Which in part explains the big red truck hobby. I’m missing the chili cook-off tonight at the Poynette fire station, but I dropped off some Madison Sourdough bakery handiwork before I headed down to MSN, so I’m there in spirit and cake.
On the downslope of the Seaside II adventure, with the City Council about to pick five candidates to interview, and the interviews scheduled for Jan. 9 and 10. I should be done by Jan 31, as the new person gives notice to their present employer and makes arrangements to arrive at the best job overlooking Monterey Bay. Best job except for Seaside Fire Chief, which is also currently open with Chief Guiterrez’s Dec. 31 retirement. The joke (no off position on the imagination switch) is I’m going to appoint myself Fire Chief for my birthday. No one could stop me, and I’d skip a few decades of climbing the fire service ladder, and get a cool white helmet.
Problem is, I like the rung I’m on. Jump out of the back and do something. With zero paperwork. Black helmets rule.
FLASHBACK WARNING !!!
Way back when, I was visiting the in-laws early during the Davenport days. There must have been some cookies involved because I grabbed a milk jug out of the fridge. An as-yet unopened jug. Father in-law oh so helpfully takes the jug from me, and opens it while explaining the plastic ring thing that’s attached to the cap has to be broken off before the cap can come off. Just smile in rapt wonder and say, “oh … thank you”. Father in-law returns to watching golf on television. Senior golf because, I don’t know, regular golf is too fast-paced.
Anyway, start to fill the glass and say to myself (out loud, but to myself) “they let me run an entire city”. Have some milk and cookies, and move on to the next adventure.
A couple decades pass and the beloved quite rightfully inquires when this Seaside thing is gonna end. Tell her the end of January and I’ll be driving back because the LZ fills up with stuff and driving back with the stuff will be easier than trying to ship it. It’ll also provide an excuse to visit Zion and Arches NPs in the winter on the way back. She asks how much stuff is at the LZ and I forget to mention the albums which tend to collect along with the REI must-haves, but I do say there’s a new duvet cover and thing that goes inside. She asks, quite rightfully, about whether the duvet cover and the thing that goes inside are the same size this time because … well, I screwed up last time and what do I know about bedding beyond sleeping bags?
So I smile, wink and say, “you know, they let me run two different cities two thousand miles apart”. In return I get the much-coveted eyeroll, smile and head shake.
The fact is my domestic absent-mindedness is charming. Add it to the list. Or, perhaps more accurately, start the list with it. Not knowing where anything is or how to work anything not in the garage, workshop or stereo cabinet is a feature, not a bug. There ain’t no point in tweaking the task separation that binds us. How’s that saying go, in love, each of you thinks you’re the lucky one. Where would she be without me taking out (some of) the trash, shoveling (most of the) snow or opening recalcitrant pickle jars?
Seem to have written myself into a corner here. Best to move on.
Before I move on from Seaside, by popular demand we’re doing this thing where I try to download some big chunks of stuff I’ve come across over three decades of adventure in local government. I fantasize Seaside department heads will revolt if the next CM strays too far from inclusive, positive, accountable, risk-taking behavior that’ll get Seaside to the future it deserves, so I fill their heads (and hearts) with inclusive, positive, accountable, risk-taking stuff.
I started with a presentation I delivered at an ICMA National Conference about whether assistants who attended the presentation were ready to sit in the “big chair”. Then reviewed the concept of taking on adaptive challenges as higher order transformation instead of approaching everything as a series of technical problems, as Professor Linsky proffered. Appreciative inquiry was next, to be followed by the OODA Loop and Professor Nalbandian’s work on high-performing local governments, and then closing with Professor Csikszentmihalyi’s treatise on “Flow”.
Flow is the state of happiness that occurs when increasing skills meet increasing challenge. Like, I don’t know, opening milk jugs. Or running two cities separated by three mountain ranges. Flow is a fairly important construct to understand when responsible for building organizational capacity, department by department, person by person, to do the life-improving and / or life and death work of cities. Or else you stagnate and go backwards. And that’s no fun at all.
Getting back to Part 1, what is obvious to me is starting mountain climbing at fifty and firefighting at sixty is a “flow” thing. Chainsaw juggling at a timebomb factory for thirteen years gets into your blood. So after Davenport, big new risky things which needed new learning to survive and / or thrive were required. Big steep pointy chunks of earth with snow on top while in Seaside. Big red trucks to jump out of in Poynette. Same, same.
So, if you came here looking for advice … have some milk and cookies, and go find a new adventure.
Be ridiculous and unprecedented.
