"Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be...City Administrators?"
City Admins Have a Profound Impact on Our Daily Lives; They are Woefully Underappreciated
My recent piece on the underappreciation of U.S. Representatives and their staffs really struck a chord, and I received a lot of feedback on it, almost all positive and agreeing with the post (including a DM from a former Representative who thanked me for shining a light on the matter).
An old friend of mine who now works largely in city government also reached out to me and wished to write about how local staff, particularly City Administrators, are just as undervalued. City Administrators probably have more of a direct impact on our daily lives than any other local official. So today’s post we turned over to him. The below has been edited for space and clarity.
The Life of a City Administrator
“Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys. Don’t let ’em pick guitars or drive them old trucks. Let ’em be doctors and lawyers and such.” The song was written by Ed Bruce and his wife Patsy Bruce as a warning to all the mothers not to let their little boys get into the tough and nomadic life of cowboy culture. While I am not a singer of the caliber of either Waylon Jennings or Willie Nelson, I am here to warn parents out there not to let their little kiddos become City Administrators because of the tough and nomadic life of the City Administration lifestyle. They should become electricians and plumbers if they can.
The Dynamics of the Job
The City Administrator position is inherently a solitary one, in that it is apolitical by design and definition. The city council is the political entity, they have that job by winning a popularity contest pure and simple (regardless of competence, intelligence or outright practicality), and the City Administrator is the “CEO” of the city and keep it running on a daily basis even with the city council’s meddling. The City Administrator needs the education, training and experience to do what that position does. All the council needs is to show up and declare themselves a leader amongst other leaders. Small cities have only one administrator and usually five or even seven council members, including the mayor. Well, the Mayor is an army of one just like the administrator some might say. You would be incorrect, as most cities have a weak mayor system, in which the mayor is a figurehead amongst many, not on his/her own like the administrator.
The life of an Administrator is a nomadic one. According to the Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University, the average city manager “stays only three to five years in a city indicates the demands of the job”. (JOHN REHFUSS: Director of the Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University, he is author of the book, Public Administration as Political Process.) For a career path, the Administrator usually starts as an administrator at a small municipality and after a hopefully successful stint of three or more years, moves on to a bigger city. That is unless you start out as the administrator of your hometown or everything is so great at that municipality you don’t want to move, which is extremely rare. When I say bigger, I don’t mean you are moving from a city of five thousand people to one of fifty thousand people in one leap. It is more like a leap of about three thousand people per move to a different city. Moving from city to city, gradually moving your way up in population and pay scale until you are either comfortable with the community for which you are working, you reach the edge of your competence, or you retire.
The City Administrator is very much on an island, and is often the one being honest, direct and the bearer of bad news. It’s a dynamic that often makes you a punching bag more than the paragon of integrity. Spineless council members, who have more of an interest in opposing fact and good counsel if there is a cost, typically don’t like you and should not be thought of as allies; they just want all the glory and pats on the back and none of the blame, even though more often than not, they are the cause of many a problem.
The Administrator position is a stressful one as well. You are in a fishbowl, everything you say or do is noted and disseminated through the internet for everyone to see, hear, criticize and comment on. It is an at will position, so the city council that hired you and would definitely throw you under the bus, can fire you for no reason at all (without cause). Your termination is public and on the internet for all to see, speculate and comment on with stupid and uninformed opinions.
It is particularly problematic when you moved you and your family to another city and school district, as well as your spouse/partner putting their career on hold to follow you to a community that said they wanted you there but treated you like garbage anyway. You have no private life or life outside the office. Some states (and some municipalities on their own) require the Administrator live in the city in which they work so they have, “skin in the game” and “be a part of the community.” Citizens can interact with you at any time on anything they want. You are out for dinner with your family, a citizen can walk up to you and yell and scream at you about any of the services the city provides. Grocery shopping? Same. Your spouse/partner as well as children going about their daily lives catch continued flak from the angered voters with a grievance, righteous or not. Mowing the front lawn of your house? Free game for drive up complaints and vitriol.
Dealing with the Cranks
Which brings us to the half dozen or so activist citizens everyone would quickly recognize as “cranks.” They have no real ideas on how to make the city better, what is practical, or even legal. But they have a thousand random ideas, none of which are helpful. They absolutely hate the Administrator with a white-hot passion because of the job they have, the fact Administrators often have to say “no” (more often than not, because of the actual law, which is a constraint the Crank doesn’t have) and the fact councilpersons have no incentive to criticize or even stop their rantings. It has only gotten worse. There are three main reasons; narcissism, jealousy and technology.
Cranks are very narcissistic in the fact that only their opinion matters to them, and they definitely don’t like being told “no”, which is what the Administrator is hired to say sometimes, and which, the Council runs away from like parents away from an infant’s diaper blowout. The Crank too often reacts like a toddler that can’t have candy five minutes before dinner time. This makes the City Administrator the Crank’s personal enemy and target for ire.
I know jealousy has been around since Cain v. Abel, but it has now become an industrial complex. Yes, people did get jealous, however it was not weaponized as it is today. Now, the average citizen Crank thinks everything is a zero-sum game and when anyone else wins, the Crank loses. This has profound impacts for the City Administrator who is often the victim of the polarization of elected officials. The funny thing is, if the administrator succeeds, the community succeeds, and the Crank succeeds too.
Finally, there is technology. Facebook, Nextdoor, chatrooms, X (f.k.a. Twitter), Slack, WhatsApp, Discord and WeChat have only added to the amplitude of the ferocity of the Crank. In the past, a Crank had to show up for meetings and show their face and stupidity in public, but now all they have to do is type a couple anonymous, incendiary sentences and send them out into the ether. They will not stop or hesitate to write or say anything, (it is not like slander and libel are unknown entities to them, they just don’t care) until the Administrator is either fired (Cranks love and absolutely live for this), or quits for another job in the private or public sector. These themes have added to the overall rage of the average citizen. This level of activism is counterproductive; it removes someone entrusted to help the town and deters qualified individuals from considering it for employment, to the detriment of the city.
The Administrator is the manager of staff inside and outside of the office. Staff should work with the administrator, but in fact, far too often they work to sabotage them. There are a few reasons for this; one, usually at least one staff member had designs on the job and did not get it, so they do everything they can to thwart the administrator at every turn. Two, staff generally hates change, and a new administrator represents change in the staff’s eyes, even though it doesn’t have to be that way. Three, internal accountability. For a person who is terrible at their job, a new administrator will actually hold that staff member to do their job with some competence. Why should that staff member do a good job when they can argue, complain, resist, sue or have a relative on the council thwart the administrator from doing the job the council hired them to do. These issues are prevalent pretty much everywhere.
Conclusion
After reading this article you may think, this guy really hates Public Administration, the City Administrator position and even representative democracy as a whole. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. I believe the study of Public Administration can only help the position of City Administrator and small communities. Those that hear the call of administration and the root of it, to help their fellow persons and citizens should be encouraged. However, this field is not for the meek, empathetic, thin skinned or uninformed. I am here to inform those that may choose to be a City Administrator to think very carefully on what they are doing and assess what their strengths and weaknesses are before they start on the path of City Administration. If you believe you have what it takes, then go for it. If you don’t, I would suggest being an electrician, plumber or even garbage man. They get a lot more respect.
PurpleAmerica Recommended Stories
These suggestions come directly from the City Admin who wrote the story above.
Survival for city managers: Be an expert but don't raise political hackles. JOHN REHFUSS (link contains content in its entirety)
The Challenge of the City Manager: Being a Rational Actor in an Irrational Time. MICHAEL R. FORD (link contains content in its entirety)
Death of the Public Servant. DANIEL A. ROSEMOND
Podcast: City Manager Unfiltered. JOE TURNER
Or if you want a little light reading before you go to bed, Google City Administrator Fired in (insert home state here) and start reading.
Back to PurpleAmerica again, I am going to offer one of my own, since it seems to be an ongoing issue in our society. Too frequently, we assume we know more than experts, and rather than deferring to them, we berate them. We really need to start accepting that intelligence and expertise of people who have studied and experienced more in particular fields far outweighs our own knowledge and defer to them more frequently. That’s why I am going to recommend reading Tom Nichols’ “Death of Expertise” (again).
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
Finding fun facts about City Administrators is difficult, largely because its local or regional and few statistics actually are regularly maintained broader than that.
So instead, I just found this interesting nugget about 10 facts about potholes, which we tend to ignore, but City Admins have to deal with regularly. Enjoy.
https://www.cityworks.com/blog/10-fascinating-facts-about-potholes/
PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject
City Admins, City Clerks, City Staff, all of these local people who do their jobs regularly without attention and appeal, help make sure our society actually functions. They are horribly underappreciated, deal with things we usually don’t care about until they go wrong and are constantly barraged with a lot of unfair vitriol. Next time you see a City Admin or any administratve official, thank them and let them know you appreciate the job they are doing. They’ll appreciate it.