Politics & Government

Hopkins Council Members Head Back to School

The League of Minnesota Cities' Leadership Conference for Newly Elected Officials helps council members transition into their new roles.

Carl Neu didn’t soften his message for the dozens of newly elected officials who gathered Friday in Brooklyn Center’s Earle Brown Heritage Center. They face declining revenues, plummeting property values and residents more frustrated than ever by government. The challenges are as tough as ever.

“You do have the chance to resign after you go back from the session,” Neu joked in the opening presentation of the League of Minnesota Cities' Leadership Conference for Newly Elected Officials.

Neu, a Colorado-based local governance consultant, may have been joking. But newly elected officials—like freshman council members Molly Cummings and Jason Gadd—have a lot to learn after they take office. Their new positions come with new laws that apply to them, new relationships with their neighbors and a host of new city processes to learn about.

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As Neu noted during his presentation, elected officials aren’t tested for proficiency before they run for office and they don’t need to know the ins-and-outs of city processes to win elections. It’s the job of conferences like the one on Friday to help council members make that transition from campaigning to governing.

“Nobody gave you the magic wand from the Hogwarts school of municipal leadership,” Neu said.

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The two-day conference cost Hopkins $570 total—$285 each for Cummings and Gadd. Both came away from the conference convinced of its worth—and they’re not alone. About half of all newly elected city officials in the state attend the training, estimated Kevin Frazell, the League of Minnesota’s director of member services. 

Said Cummings: “We’re entrusted with a great deal of responsibility, and it’s our responsibility to learn as much as we can.”

 

A new set of rules

The conference is not what most would call a relaxing weekend. New council members learned about key laws covering open meetings, data practices, conflicts of interest and gifts. A city finance director spent three hours walking them through the basics of municipal financing. A city attorney explained the different classes of cities and how that affects their options.

It was a two-day crash course that taught them the basics of what council members can and can’t do.

“Somebody might be a city government groupie and decide to follow (the procedures) on their own, but that’s kind of rare,” Frazell said.

Hopkins council members traditionally have experience on boards or commissions before being elected to the City Council. Cummings and Gadd served on the Park Board, and Cummings also served on the Zoning and Planning Commission.

But such experience is “very narrow and segmented,” Frazell said. A past Zoning and Planning commissioner, for example, has probably gained a fair bit of knowledge on land use. But he or she may be less clear about the specifics of city finance or the open meetings law.

Said Cummings: “Certainly you are aware that there are laws that impact (you), but we were advisory. You don’t need to be quite as aware.”

With so much information thrown at the attendees, conference leaders don’t expect the new council members to soak up every detail they learn in the seminars. To the contrary, Minnetonka City Attorny Desyl L. Peterson, one of the instructors, warned that they’d remember just a percentage of the information she presented.

But they say the voluminous coverage raises the council members’ antenna so they know when to be alert and seek more information about an issue.

The conference also included softer elements that Frazell said are just as important as the technical details. The schedule included time for newly elected council members to mingle with experienced officials who could share what they’ve learned. The presenters encouraged council members who ran for ideological reasons to think through the implications before they act. And they stressed working with city staff and fellow council members.

 

A weighty responsibility

Neu reminded the attendees that now that they’re council members, they aren’t like other residents in their communities. They have authority that others don’t have, such as the power to raise taxes and regulate land use, and should provide leadership.

“Think about it. You have power in the community,” he said. “You do gain weight—figuratively—by making deeper footprints in your community. And when you leave, those footprints remain.”

That message wasn’t lost on Gadd. He didn’t feel intimidated by all the new laws and liabilities council members face—and he certainly never felt ready to resign like Neu joked about at the conference’s opening. But he said the seminars gave him more confidence to work for Hopkins residents.

“It enhanced my outlook of a councilman’s job,” Gadd said. “Really, our job is to look into the future, get a vision and come back to the present to build a pathway (to that vision).”


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