Cassandra Hemenway and Phil Dodd
Cassandra Hemenway and Phil Dodd of The Bridge interviewed Kelly McNicholas Kury, the new Montpelier city manager, on March 19. The interview has been edited for clarity and length. The Bridge’s questions are in bold.
Where did you grow up?
KMK: My family is really rooted on the East Coast. Both of my parents grew up in the Bronx and had big families that all kind of stuck near New York and New Jersey, and so I have lots of cousins and aunts and uncles. But when I was young, my dad was one of the few in his family who moved, for his corporate leadership position. So I actually grew up in Ohio from when I was three to 13, and then right before high school, my family moved to Connecticut, and so I lived in Connecticut and went to high school there, and still have family and friends who all live throughout New England.
But you ended up in Aspen?
KMK: I did. I went to college out in California, and then moved back east, and my first jobs out of college were in New Jersey. I worked for an attorney in a small practice, then I worked for the Sierra Club, and then I went to the Peace Corps in West Africa and was over there for two years. And when I was finished with that service, I moved out to Colorado. I worked in Denver in local government, and then was offered a job up in Aspen, working for the county, where Aspen is the county seat. I moved up there and lived there for 13 years.
Being city manager is a little different than what you did before. Why did you want to be a city manager?
KMK: I wanted to be more directly involved with the day-to-day administration of projects and the management of people. The job that I held immediately before making this transition was an elected office, and it was a full-time job. It had a broad scope of services, because county government in Colorado is bigger. It’s all very policy focused and that’s great, but less hands-on, on-the-ground project implementation. I thought I accomplished a lot in the policy space, and I was not looking to continue to be elected for my full career. So I’m still in local government, but in a very different role.
Why Montpelier?
KMK: I had some criteria about places I’d be willing to move, and types of organizations and size and scope that I thought would be a good fit. I wanted to live in a place that was outdoorsy, where people enjoy outdoor recreation, and that has progressive values. A place that was a small town, but not suburban. I was looking for a small-sized city that had winter. I really like winter, and so I was not looking anywhere in the South. I was really only looking in northern states and for the right size of the government, either a county size or a regional government or a small city.
Does this seem like a good fit so far?
KMK: I think it is a good fit. I had that feeling after leaving my interview in December, but I continue to think that. I continue to experience the tight-knit, involved community, the commitment to volunteering and being engaged and informed and active. I think it has its challenges. I think it’s a place that has big ambitions, and the resources don’t match the ambitions. And so there’s just a real need to balance, and give-and-take, and long-term plan, and prioritize, and have some discipline around those plans, which can be tricky to do when you have councils that change all the time. And so I look to things we have on the books that the community has been part of, like the city plan.
People are really friendly here and there’s been a lot of effort made to be very welcoming. My kids will move out here when they finish the school year in Colorado. I think this is going to be an amazing place for them to live. I’ve loved being able to go into the stores here and shop and look around. Aspen is such a luxury market town, and it’s just not accessible for working folks. So I’m loving it here.
How old are your kids? Do you have a place to settle when they get here?
KMK: My kids are six and nine years old. They’ll go to Union [Elementary School], and they’re signed up at the Rec Center for camp all summer. I’ll be looking for babysitters. My goal is by early June to have found and bought a place. I do need to carve out a little personal time off to get those ducks in a row. I’m shocked that I’ve already been here a month. It’s gone very fast.
Have you developed some ideas about things you might change, or about some of the projects on the table right now?
KMK: Some of those plans are already built in. When I look to the Department of Public Works, they have their five-year paving plans. They have their capital plans. What I’m going to be looking at is how that all is aligning with other plans. My question is always going to be, ‘Are we accomplishing as many goals as we can with this opportunity? Are we doing the right things well, and not the wrong things?’ I think there are opportunities to modernize how we do things internally, but also how we provide services externally to the community.
Is there any thought of changing the structure of city government at this point, or not?
KMK: I think it’s early for that. I am thinking about how our leadership team is organized. When I’m thinking about bringing on an assistant city manager, I’m really starting to spend some time analyzing if I want that to be a person who oversees a select number of departments or if they’re more of a generalist, kind of a second hand for me. Looking at it that way creates two different candidate profiles. Similarly, I have an admin assistant role that I will be filling, and I’m looking at whether there is a person to recruit that can help with some of the modernization across the organization, rather than just serving my scheduling needs or things like that. Those are some of the things I’m starting to think through with the opportunity to build my team out.
What will you be looking for as you build your team?
KMK: The thing that keeps me up at night is that I don’t know what I don’t know. And so I’m looking to have a team that I can really trust and rely on to give me good advice and bring their expertise into the city. I’m also looking for folks who have a bit of a start-up mentality, because that’s essentially what this team is with these big vacancies. I’m looking for … can-do folks, folks who are trying to get to yes, but not naively or blindly. And so I’m looking for folks who have that mentality.
Is there anything else you want to add?
KMK: It’s been an exciting time for me. I’ve felt very welcomed. I’ve heard a lot from the community about wanting to support my success. Honestly, with this leadership transition, there are still many months ahead of us. I know decisions need to be made, but I also have to take the time to be able to think strategically. I think in a year, we’ll all feel more settled. But it’s going to take a while to get there. I also just want to share with everybody that I’m open and available and very happy and willing to make connections and hear from people, and get the stories and the expertise and the knowledge of folks who’ve lived there their whole lives, and folks who’ve come and have had success, and folks like me, who are new and building a new life and a new community. My door is open, and I try to be as responsive as I can, as quickly as I can.
