Saying Goodbye: Outgoing Hopkins City Manager Discusses His Experience

City Manager Rick Getschow has been helping to chart Hopkins’ course for more than six years. It’s a tenure that has seen new development, a changing economy and preparation for major regional projects.

That tenure ended Wednesday, though, when Getschow worked his final day with Hopkins before departing for Eden Prairie . Getschow sat down with Patch during his penultimate day on the job to talk about his experiences as city manager.

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Hopkins Patch: First of all, can you describe to me the city when you got here—the state of the city when you got here, what you noticed first about it.

Rick Getschow: I came to Hopkins in 2005, and what really attracted me at that time and still exists now is the city that had everything—the full-service city in the metropolitan area with its own downtown, with a full array of city services, a real small-town feel and a real community atmosphere. And that drew me to Hopkins. And that existed when I came, and it still exists today, and it probably existed for the last 20, 30, 40 years. Hopkins has a long history, a very rich history, and you can still see that in the community.

Hopkins Patch: Were there any goals that you immediately identified as things that needed to be targeted?

Getschow: There were goals coming in that the council and staff worked together to establish. There were projects that had existed when I came—redevelopment projects, some that still exist to this day and several which have been accomplished. Like Excelsior Crossings. So there were redevelopment projects. And again, that’s been something the city’s been doing for the last 20 or 25 years, so coming in I knew that these were some downtown redevelopment projects that are important to us: This is a redevelopment project on the Excelsior Crossings, near Excelsior Boulevard and 169; these are redevelopment projects near Highway 7 and Hopkins Crossroads. So in terms of redevelopment, a lot of that was known and continues. But one of the first things that the staff did and the council did when I came was to sit down and start building a strategic plan. We’ve had a set of goals—whether it be one-year goals or two-year goals—we’ve always had that as long as I’ve been here. And that’s evolved to where now—I think you’re aware—that we have the three main goals and a lot of strategies under those goals.

Hopkins Patch: Was that new with you, the long-term strategic plan?

Getschow: When I came, the previous city manager and council had just started talking about goals, and they may have had some strategies. But what was new with me was actually sitting down and working with the council about establishing a set of just a few goals, three—I think at one time we had four or five—and really focusing in on accomplishing strategies within those goals, which we think are our strengths. A lot of that came out of a community survey that we did in 2007. That’s the first time the city conducted a really in-depth survey of the community in over 20 years. So we were able to conduct a community-wide survey and then really focus in a little bit more on our goals. There’s always been some different strategies and things that the city wanted to get accomplished. But I think in the last maybe three, four years, we really focused in on these three main goals.

Hopkins Patch: Put ’em on paper, it sounds like, rather than just have them—

Getschow: Put them on paper and actually have the council adopt them, have them approve them in a meeting and then have the city manager go out into the community and speak about the goals at different meetings, have the City Council focus on what are we doing with those goals. So you have different formats and different meetings. But in the end, we’re talking about what progress we made on our goals in the past year.

Hopkins Patch: What was your leadership style to help direct the city toward these goals?

Getschow: My leadership style has always been collaborative and participative. It’s been the ability to take different ideas—whether it be different city staff members and not just department heads, but all employees, to try to take their ideas and thoughts on operations; to mix those, combine those with thoughts of the City Council and the thoughts of businesses, community members, other government agency and the school; and to take all those different viewpoints and ideas and formulate, whether it be that strategic plan we talked about, but also just getting daily work done—getting projects done and the projects accomplished. It’s just bringing people together, collaborating, really trying to set a tone with the council that everyone has a voice and everyone has a say in how we move forward. That’s always been my leadership style.

Hopkins Patch: How did you find the council to work with?

Getschow: The council has been excellent. The entire time that I’ve been here I’ve had one mayor. He’s been a phenomenal leader of the community. And I’ve worked with six other City Council members over the six years, and everyone single one of them has been excellent to work with. I’ve been lucky.

Hopkins Patch: Is there one that you’ve been closer to than another—the mayor perhaps?

Getschow: You work closest with the mayor. The mayor is the leader of the council. So you’re going to work much more closely with the mayor than the rest of the council. But I could say that I established relationships with every council member, as well. We’re together every Tuesday as a group, as you know, so you obviously establish good working relationships.

Hopkins Patch: What’s the most difficult decision y’all handled together?

Getschow: I think there have been a few. I think recently what jumps out at me would be budget decisions—working through our last two or three annual budgets and capital improvement plans. We’ve been in a very tough economic climate, and we’ve had to work really hard to manage and balance our budget—so that would probably be the last two or the years—(in) the economic times that we’re in, to be able to bring forward as a team, you know staff and council, a balanced and manageable budget that we feel has never compromised the delivery of services.

Hopkins Patch: Are there any decisions that you can point to and you can say, “This is what I’m really proud of. This is something we did that was good”?

Getschow: Well, it is we. That’s the key. There aren’t many decisions that one individual makes. There are several decisions that the group makes. And they’re not decisions as much as things that happened or projects that happened. But the Excelsior Crossings project—from some of the criticism that the city received for waiting on a good project when the site sat vacant even before I was city manager, prior to 2005, all the way to the three class A office buildings with 3,000 jobs—as a project is great.

Hopkins Patch: We’ve been talking about your work with the council. You do a lot of stuff just in your job as city manager with staff. What’s the most agonizing decision you had to make in that aspect? Or tough. Maybe you don’t agonize.

Getschow: I think tough decisions as the city manager— Well, again, I think anytime when putting different budgets together, and we had to not fill some open positions or keep certain positions or certain areas in the city open because we needed to balance the budget, can be difficult for the different departments.

Hopkins Patch: Did you do actual layoffs or you just didn’t fill (the positions)?

Getschow: Not in the time that I’ve been here, we did not do actual layoffs, no. 

Hopkins Patch: What are the opportunities you see for the city moving forward? What do you think your next successor will see?

Getschow: (For) the successor, I think that the city is in a great position right now. As the economy begins to recover, there are all these areas, these redevelopment areas within the community—and the coming along with that, that is just a phenomenal opportunity. I mean, again, I said before, the city when I started has a really strong sense of community and a small-town feel, and we just keep building on that. So the next city manager will find that. But they’re going to find with that the opportunity to continue the redevelopment and to continue the redevelopment along and at a future LRT and hopefully in an improving economy.

Hopkins Patch: Do you see any challenges on the horizon.

Getschow: I do, and I think this applies to most every city: The financial challenges of we’re probably not going to see rapidly increasing property values, which would allow communities to continue to operate in the same way that they do now. So I think Hopkins, as much as any other city, they’re going to have to look long term—three years out, five years out—and really take a close look at how they deliver the services that they deliver and have to make some tough choices about what people are willing to pay for what they’re going to get.

Hopkins Patch: What are you taking away from this job that made you a better city manager?

Getschow: What lessons. That’s a good question. I think the lesson that I continue to learn is that it’s all about people and working with people. In everything I’ve always done, in Hopkins and will continue to do, involves working in a team atmosphere with people and accomplishing whatever the wishes are of the community as a team, as a group, as a collaborative undertaking.

Hopkins Patch: Any words of advice for your successor?

Getschow: You’re coming into a great situation with a community that has excellent leadership and excellent community involvement and community participation and a very highly regarded, well-qualified city staff. So it’s a matter of continuing to take this community further. Because it’s all about the people that you work with, that make this a great city.