Brandon Ford rejoins Dave Pribulka and Eden Ratliff and wastes no time stepping back into the role of host. He deftly guides the conversation from how have expectations changed for managers to something much deeper that touches on what it means to be apolitical in this new reality and how compartmentalization may or may not serve the profession going forward.

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00:00 Sports and Local Engagement

03:56 International City Management Association Insights

09:30 Expectations of Local Government

18:44 The Role of Technology in Local Governance

23:13 Navigating Civic Engagement and Emotional Appeals

25:13 The Complexity of Local Governance

28:35 Engaging the Next Generation of Managers

30:26 The Balance of Politics and Management

32:34 Compartmentalizing Personal Beliefs in Governance

36:34 The Future of Political Neutrality in Local Government

40:18 Maintaining Professional Standards Amidst Political Pressures

Who gets to decide the value of a place? In other words, who gets to decide the metric?

I brought that question to Christa Breum Amhøj, a Danish practitioner, researcher, and what I can only describe as a social architect because she reads a place the way a building architect reads a site. And to John Diamond, who sits in Manchester and has been watching the same tensions play out in the UK across decades of academic research, consultation, and engagement with emerging local government challenges. What follows is my attempt to trace the arc of what the three of us discovered together.

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• 01:39 — Opening: Who Creates Value in a Community?
• 02:23 — Competing Definitions of Public Value
• 03:38 — Rethinking Value: The Aging Society Example
• 06:22 — Tourism, Resistance, and Local Control (Scotland Case)
• 08:51 — Visible vs. Invisible Value
• 11:11 — Micro-Experiments vs. Traditional Innovation
• 14:53 — Professional Expertise vs. Local Knowledge
• 19:43 — A Place Has Agency
• 21:00 — Learning to Observe and Map a Place
• 23:27 — From Problem-Solving to System-Based Thinking
• 24:42 — Case Study: Faxe Municipality (Denmark)
• 27:00 — Redesigning the Festival Through Community Input
• 28:30 — Outcomes: Relationships, Access, and New Pathways
• 32:49 — Why Process Matters More Than Outputs
• 34:00 — Access and Infrastructure: The Transport Example
• 37:45 — The COMPASS Model Overview
• 42:30 — Managing Tension and Conflict in Co-Creation
• 44:00 — Expanding the Definition of Prosperity
• 46:30 — The Role of the Facilitator in Place-Based Work
• 53:34 — Closing Reflections: Practice Over Theory

Economic development isn’t just about buildings and business, sidewalks and parking, blighted malls and dying downtowns, housing shortages and shrinking workforces, casino controversies and data center ordinances. It’s actually about facilitating conversations with the people invested in the outcomes.

Keri (Miller) Kenepp, Director of Community and Economic Development for College Township, Pennsylvania, and Erin (Genest) Trone, Project Manager for BusinessPA at the Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development, walk us through a maze of issues facing local governments today and grant us invaluable insights into how we can think about a future together.

This episode is made possible by a partnership with APMM, the Association for Pennsylvania Municipal Management.

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00:00 – Who Shapes the Future of a Place? (Episode Setup)

02:00 – Keri’s Non-Traditional Path into Economic Development

05:00 – The Expansive Nature of Local Government Roles

07:00 – “Creating the Conditions” for Development

08:30 – The Long Game vs. Election Cycles

10:30 – What Elected Officials Want (and Need to Say in Public)

12:30 – Casinos: Public Resistance vs. Legal Reality

15:00 – Data Centers: Misunderstanding and Zoning Constraints

17:00 – “We Have to Allow for All Uses” (Policy Reality)

20:00 – The Power of Community Resistance (Nestlé Case)

22:00 – The Blighted Mall and Risk-Taking in Development

23:00 – Understanding the Private Sector (Erin’s State Role)

25:00 – Matchmaking: Communities and Companies

29:00 – The Facilitator Role Defined

31:00 – Advising Elected Officials (Pros, Cons, and Decisions)

33:00 – Tension: Standards vs. Development (Affordable Housing)

36:00 – Sidewalks as a Case Study in Equity and Safety

38:00 – Developer Perspective: Why Projects Don’t Pencil Out

40:00 – Blighted Properties and “Highest and Best Use”

43:00 – Redeveloping the Mall (Zoning Shifts and Density)

45:30 – Parking: Outdated Assumptions and New Thinking

49:00 – Changing Mindsets About Walkability

50:30 – What Keri Had to Unlearn About Economic Development

53:00 – Erin on Labor Shortages, AI, and Shifting Metrics

Maggie Dobbs is a trained city planner (Rutgers) who spent a decade writing comprehensive plans across Montgomery County before stepping into her current role as Borough Manager of Narberth, Pennsylvania, a half-square-mile community tucked inside Lower Merion Township just outside of Philadelphia. She arrived after a period of leadership turnover. What she found was not a small job. It was a dense one.

Host Brandon Ford and co-host Nancy Hess have a wide ranging conversation with Maggie that moves through the real experience of borough management: the math of running a full municipal government — police, public works, library, eleven miles of road — with fifteen people and a fraction of a township’s budget; the intimacy that makes boroughs special and the same intimacy that makes criticism land close to the heart; and the reality that wearing every hat in the building demands more knowledge, not less, than specializing in a larger organization.

Maggie is candid about walking into a community that had cycled through five managers in four years, what it took to steady that ship, and why her focus is on building standard operating procedures so the day-to-day can run itself. Along the way, the crew explores Narberth’s housing story — how a historically working-class rail town became the highest median sales price in Montgomery County — and what that shift means for a community once referred to as “Mayberry,” still sorting out who it is.

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Five Realities Before You Take the Seat

1. Your job will crowd out your job. Protect space for strategic work.
2. SOPs are not paperwork. They are oxygen.
3. Fill your blind spots early. Pride is expensive.
4. Proactive information reduces political friction.
5. Borough leadership is not smaller. It’s closer.

0:00 – Introducing Maggie and Narberth

1:18 – The “donut hole” geography inside Lower Merion

2:09 – Maggie’s path: NJ Dept. of Agriculture → Rutgers → Planning

3:30 – Montgomery County Planning Commission & contract planning model

5:49 – Writing four comprehensive plans; interviewing...

There is a polite fiction in local government that serving “at the pleasure of the governing body” rests securely on mutual trust. Often it does. Increasingly, it can feel more fragile.

In today’s political climate, the employment relationship between elected officials and their chief administrative officer deserves a closer examination. What protections actually exist? Who advocates for the manager when circumstances shift?

In this episode of Generation on the Rise, Eden Ratliff and Dave Pribulka sit down with Brad Gotshall to explore what it means to become, in his words, a “free agent.” They examine contracts and severance, and they also confront questions of reputation, professional identity, and the personal weight of transitions that can be political, strategic, or simply inevitable.

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1. 00:00 – Cold open, book banter, introductions
2. 04:30 – Brad’s background: elected official at 17 to professional manager
3. 09:30 – Transition to Warren County and “free agency”
4. 11:30 – Protecting yourself as a manager: personal and professional buckets
5. 13:30 – Contract negotiations: learning the hard way
6. 16:00 – Do managers need representation?
7. 19:00 – The loneliness of severance negotiations
8. 22:00 – Lower Paxton: no contract, negotiated exit
9. 26:00 – Recruiter’s role in negotiations
10. 31:00 – Severance pushback and board dynamics
11. 37:00 – Creative contract structures (Rehoboth example)
12. 39:30 – Should managers use agents?
13. 41:30 – Legal review vs. negotiation support
14. 43:00 – Preserving reputation under NDAs
15. 45:30 – Building a personal brand before crisis hits
16. 48:00 – No-fault divorce vs. political dismissal
17. 50:00 – Wrap-up and Part Two teaser

Eden and Dave are joined by guest Jeffrey Stonehill, Borough Manager of Chambersburg Pennsylvania. They begin with an examination of how crises today differ from those Jeffrey encountered when he began in the field. Although they traverse the doom and gloom of dealing with crisis in the profession, they return to the core reasons they remain in the field.

Contrasting generational perspectives and recognition of the vulnerability that comes with commitment and transitions make this episode a memorable one.

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Hot Takes:

🔥Crisis has always been part of the job. The pressure isn’t new — the speed is.

🔥Not every issue deserves full emotional escalation.

🔥Fire Suppression ≠ Fire Prevention. Be proactive.

🔥 The communities you serve will continue without you—and that's okay.

🔥Leaving a community requires a grieving process, even when it's your choice to leave.

🔥The work is meaningful. Despite the pressure, leaders would not trade the experience.

Timestamps

00:00 - Cold open and greetings

03:47 - Welcome and introduction to Generation on the Rise

04:42 - Introducing first-time guest Jeffrey Stonehill

06:32 - Jeffrey’s career journey: From SUNY grad to 40-year manager

08:15 - The “crisis as normal” phenomenon in local government

11:45 - Why municipalities attract constant crisis

15:20 - The evolution of pressure: Then vs. now

19:30 - Harrisburg bankruptcy and advisory board experience

24:10 - The psychological toll of perpetual emergency management

28:45 - Learning to disconnect (or trying to)

33:20 - The loneliness of municipal management

37:50 - Why managers struggle to share burdens

42:15 - Transitioning between communities: The Disney tradition

45:40 - The grieving process when you leave a community

49:18 - Taking care of yourself and your family

50:05 - Despite everything: Why we love this profession

52:03 - Closing thoughts and next week’s preview

Hey listeners, if you like video with your podcast, check out this episode on Spotify with the video feed included. Don't forget to hit the follow button. And subscribe to MuniSQuare where you will find more on the Pioneering Change Community channel.

"We are all one elected official away from a hostile work environment.” - Dave

“Yeah, but if it gets that bad, why would you stay?" - Eden

Today on Generation on the Rise, what starts as tactical shop talk evolves into a revealing examination of professional isolation, with Dave pushing hard on systemic advocacy gaps while Eden counters with self-reliance pragmatism. By the end, they’re debating whether the profession’s recruitment crisis stems from lack of awareness or legitimate wariness about the job’s inherent instability.

“Labor relations are high risk, high reward. When it goes bad, it goes bad fast.” - Brandon

1. Generational dynamics within unions have shifted bargaining leverage.
2. Don’t wait until negotiation year to build trust.
3. Personnel management is on-the-job training, no matter your preparation.
4. Managers lack advocacy structures..