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Juneau City Manager Rod Swope is finishing his final days of work before taking a six-month leave of absence beginning May 1. He sat down Thursday to talk about why he wanted time off, reflect on his six years as city manager and share insights on the future.

In your six months coming up, are you going to completely unplug and try to tune out everything -

Yup.

- or are you going to still be on call?

Nope. Completely unplugged. No, I’m going to veg out completely. That’s one of the benefits of going out to Tenakee (Springs). It’s pretty remote, there’s no phone, no cell phone, nothing out there. The only way you can communicate is through UHF radio. So yeah, I’ll be pretty isolated, but what I need to recharge, I think that’s exactly what the doctor ordered. (Swope, 58, said he also plans to pay an extended visit to his parents in Colorado and crew with his his son, a commercial fisherman out of Tenakee Springs.)

Burnout was one reason you wanted to leave. How’d that manifest?

I think for those people that don’t know,  the city manager really is responsible for running general government. So you’ve got probably about five or 600 employees that all require supervision. And while I don’t directly supervise every one of them, I certainly supervise their department heads and directors.

So along with that comes a lot of, you know, decisions that need to be made, oversight, management, personnel problems and issues that need to be resolved, morale problems that need to be attended to. All of which, you know, take a lot of time and effort. Personnel problems in particular I find to be very difficult and really wear on me.

The type of things you’re not allowed to talk about?

Yeah, reprimands, somebody’s done something inappropriate, problems within the workforce, you know, not abiding by required policies, those sorts of things. And they happen with that many people. You’re always dealing with personnel issues somewhere.

So you have that, and then of course the most important part, the citizenry, your constituents.  So, you know, usually, when things come to me, they’ve become a pretty major problem and someone else in the city hasn’t been able to help them or resolve them.

And then you have nine bosses, you know, through the Assembly. All of which have different ideas about issues and different agendas of their own. So you’re trying to work as best you can to accommodate each one of those which is a challenge in itself.

So it’s a challenging job, I mean it’s very rewarding and fulfilling, but on a day-to-day basis, dealing with problems and issues and problem solving, it over time can really wear a person down.

I think on the national average, the normal length of time for a city manager is two and a half years. So they don’t stay very long. And I think in most cases it’s usually from pressures and burnout, (or) they get fired.

So if you were forced to stay on, what would we expect to see from you?

I can tell I have less patience. You know, with some issues, I’m more anxious to try to bring something to resolution and I’m not as patient. And you know, I can just - I can just feel it, you’re tired. I don’t wake up in the morning and just really have excitement about coming into work. It’s usually a sign you’re getting tired and you’re not enjoying your job as much as you should.

How much work do you actually put in on any given week?

Oh, I don’t know, probably on average 60 hours. You put in your normal 40 (hour) work week, and, you know, we always have evening meetings. And often times I’ve got lunch meetings with various organizations and groups.

And this is one of those jobs that follows you after you’ve clocked out, right?

Yeah, definitely.  I’m always getting hit up at the grocery store. Somebody takes the opportunity to come up and talk to me about an issue or a suggestion.

Another thing, in the winter in particular, when we start to get our heavy snows, I would get up fairly regularly for awhile about four in the morning and confer with both the police department and the public works guys, see what the road conditions are like, see what kind of progress they can make getting roads cleared, sidewalks.

If there’s a major incident going on in the community, I’ll get a call anytime day or night from the police chief or fire chief. There’s not a lot of those, but occasionally. So really, you’re kind of on call 24/7.

And I have gotten calls, I will admit, from citizens at four in the morning that were upset because our snow removal equipment was keeping them awake. They felt that if they should be awake, so should I. Click. Not a lot of that, but there’s some of that.

How did the leave of absence come about?

It wasn’t my idea.  One of the Assembly members sent me an e-mail, said Rod, “Would you possibly consider returning as city manager if you had a break, adequate time away?” And I said, “Well, I’d possibly consider it.” So that was the start of it. The Assembly then approached me and said, “Well, what would you need?”

I said, “Well, at a minimum I need at least six months to really decompress and relax and get my energy back” My intent was to retire.  I was really looking forward to getting out, you know, spending some time out with my kids out at a cabin, spending more time with my parents.

But also, the discussion we had really focused around the budget and the fact that   we’re heading into some potentially pretty difficult financial problems the next two to three years. And, to be honest with you, I think they were really interested in having me come back and work on the budget during this period of time because it would be, I think not only difficult, but unfair for somebody brand new, wasn’t familiar with the community, to walk in and be faced with a problem like that.

I think I have a real advantage having been here six years. I’ve prepared three two-year budgets now.  I’m  better equipped to try to do a good job of dealing with that with as little impact to the city and citizens as possible. So that was a big part of it.

And then we also had a number of projects ongoing I was interested in seeing finished. I was glad to see them started, but I was kind of sad that I wouldn’t be here to see them to completion.

Like what?

Like the downtown parking garage and the city shop out at Seven Mile, we call it the consolidated facility. And then the other issue that I think is a huge community issue - I think it will be really interesting and challenging to try to tackle - is waste, the landfill issue and recycling issues that we face. I think that’s a pretty major issue in this community and I think that would be fun to work on, see if we can get that resolved.

If you’d retired, were you planning on leaving town?

No, no. Juneau’s home. I’ve lived here 35 years. I’d probably spend a lot more time in the place at Tenakee Springs, and hopefully we’d be able to do a little bit of traveling, but, no, we would still stay here. And I probably would have come back to work in some capacity in the fall. I can’t afford to completely retire, so I was figuring I’d come back and do something a little less taxing, a little more mindless.

Deputy City Manager Kim Kiefer will have a lot more on her plate the next six months. Will the average citizen or visitor in town feel the difference?

Nope, I think it will be pretty seamless. Kim’s very qualified. She’ll do a great job in the interim. There’s no question about it. I mean, she will be taking on a lot of responsibility, but I think, you know, really, we’ve got a good staff. We’ve got really good leadership at the head of all our departments and good staffs.

We’ll have gotten pretty much through the budget process. That’s a big challenge. So going into the summer, you usually have a different set of issues. You don’t have people complaining about berms in their driveway, the snow plows. The focus turns toward tourism and all the visitors, and trying to get the roads repaired and you know, get some of our construction projects done and that kind of stuff.

Summers are typically a little easier. People are out, they’re busy. Particularly if it’s a nice summer. People are even traveling more. Not to consider it a quiet time, but summers are usually quieter here.

What do you think some of her challenges will be in the next six months?

Well, one of the things we’re working on right now is the day I walk out the door, trying to put together some additional budget cuts. And I can’t go into detail because I don’t know what those are, but we’re looking at some things that are going to be fairly substantial and we’re trying to figure out how much money we would realize by taking some of these steps, and what would the impact, you know, what’s the downside of doing them. So I’m not sure I’m going to get them to the point we’re actually implementing them, but at least definitely want to get the concepts put together and get it started, and I think she’s gonna probably have to carry through.

You’re going to make her the bad guy?

Well, she can blame me. That’s always the benefit, too. They can blame me for everything while I’m gone. At least for six months. You know, and I think some of these things that we’re considering too will require discussion with the unions, so we’re going to have to have those conversations before - whether or not we can even do some of the things we’re considering.

Will you be going through this same process again in two years or three years?

No, I don’t think so. I committed  when I came back, I’d give them at least two years. You know, certainly, I’m thinking right now, at the end of those two years, I’m certainly gonna find it’s time to hang it up.

I think it will also provide a good transition, if Kim’s interested, and the Assembly’s interested in hiring her.  I think it would be a great opportunity. Kim will get six months of experience on the job. And then when I come back, you know, she’ll still get a couple more years as deputy. And so I think by the time I leave at the end of two years,  she’ll be in a great position to step in as city manager.  I can’t speak for the Assembly or Kim, we haven’t had these conversations, but I think it could set up a nice transition for the future.

Anything else I should have asked?

I thought you might ask me what I was most proud of.  I think one of the things I’m really proud of is the fact that our property taxes are the lowest (mill) level they’ve been in 16 years.  We’ve been able to keep reducing it down, and that’s a major source of revenue to the city. So we’ve been able to maintain services at the lowest level in 16 years, and we’ve also been able to build up our rainy day fund to about 10 million.  We’ve never achieved that goal since it was recommended by a mayor’s task force back in 1994.

So, financially, I’m pleased. I think the community is positioned fairly well financially, unlike a lot of other communities that are in serious financial trouble right now. I think the last number I saw was 87 percent of the communities throughout the United States are in serious financial trouble, and we’re not. We’re facing some problems, but I think to our credit, we recognize they’re coming and we’re going to deal with them ahead of time, so we don’t wait until it’s too late and we are in trouble.

 As I looked back, we have, over the six years I’ve been here, we’ve replaced almost every department head of every department. In most cases they retired, I didn’t fire them, but we have a new police chief, fire chief, engineering director, deputy city manager, parks and rec director. So we’ve replaced a lot of positions, and I fell really good about the people in those positions. I think we’ve got some really good, competent people.

And I guess lastly, I just sort of look around  the last two three years, there’s been a lot of construction going on in the community, a lot of big projects. New high school, new parking garage, major improvements to the airport, working on a new pool facility in the valley, put in some new turf fields. So a lot of construction projects, which I think have all been good, really beneficial to the economy and the community and we’ve got some excellent facilities to show from it.

And again, that wasn’t just my doing, but at the same time those things don’t happen if you don’t have somebody in the head of administration that’s very supportive of those types of things and make sure they happen, and get bid out and get done on time and kept within budget. Yeah, those are some of the concrete things, some of the bigger ones I’ve been happy with.

Do you have senioritis now in your last two weeks?

No, it’s just things all of a sudden, yeah, I feel a little pressure to get some things done. You know, it’s not letting up. It’s all the issues coming, trying to get resolved. And then, again, the big one is the budget issue.

I’ve just got to spend some really focused, dedicated time on trying to get some movement there. Two weeks isn’t a lot of time to get it done.

A truncated version of this interview appeared in print. This extended edit is only available online.