coming up on oakdale update we'll chat with our long time city administrator craig waldron as well visit a new business in the city and we'll preview a number of upcoming events and i'll tell you stay tuned oakdale update is straight ahead her having me good to see a friend nice to see you too ok now you're the city administrator of the city of oakdale what exactly does the city administrator do well you're the equivalent of a chief executive officer of course have the citizens of oakdale that elect the city council them the city council hires me and then it's up to me to carry out their policies work with the department heads etc etc so i'm i'm  a chief executive officer of a corporation do you work for the city council of the console by as you or how does it work yeah i work directly for the five of them and they pretty much tell me what they want to get done through policy direction and then it's up to me to take that policy and kind of translated and work program and work with our department heads to get it done what if you don't agree with the policy doesn't matter they will all and you know they're more than  minded relationship with them i can state my case and they've always been good about listening to me but in the end they're the ones that are elected by the citizens and if they want to take a policy a certain way i will support that and we'll get it done ok right now tell us about yourself a bit about your background well i come fred born in chicago but we moved the iowa i got a b a in  sociology from the university of iowa thinking about law school but then came up and got a master's in urban and regional studies that man cato we fell in love with minnesota never look self you were married at the time they married for a year gap and then we moved up man cato and like i said absolutely fell in love with minnesotan we stayed here ever since moved to the twin cities in eighty five and then completed a doctorate post doc at hamlin and been with the city for nineteen years very good and here a ph d is in what it's in public administration doctorate of public administration and should be ok now you also teach other than being city administrator where in and when and how do you work at in the years well it's basically four or five different universities at different times i've been a man cato metro state ham one and the university of minnesota and you know it varies some of them are night classes some of them are on weekends so and you know i've got to be careful to make sure the schedule works out but as long as you pick meeting or meeting you know nights when you don't have commissions or council meetings you can usually figure it out and make it work how did you get started teaching and what motivated you to do that it was interesting years ago when i was a man cato the urban studies department came to me and this was after i had been out working in the real world from region and we had done a lot of grants where they said you know watch come teacher grants class force can you come in and teach the students how to write grants and so  i did it worked well and ever since then i've enjoyed it and it seems that a lot of the schools particularly those that you know do the public administration type track they want to get people that have some real world experience and what do you get personally out of key change i really enjoy and i kind of have two big missions left in my professional life here and  one of course is to get o p l in the best possible shape for when i move on where we're in again good shape the other thing is so is that i want to work with that next generation of public administrators coming up so that's kind of my second mission is to work with that next group through internships and education and so forth and get them prepared for the real world if i know we're going to get in that  what what do you what did you think did you think coming was wrong with the system before this before you started for you when your mission if you will i think there were some situations where public administration was thought in such a theoretical class book type thing it's like no one ever talked about politics when i was in in graduate school and you know we work in political world so you might want to have some knowledge of that so i don't think things were necessarily broken but i thought it was important to have a practitioner involved in these programs have can talk about what you run into in the real world now as these kids are teaching are they on their bachelor's or master's most of them are at the master's level and some are in doctorate programs class also ok now do you what you brought some white used to teach from your teaching experience and tool you want to tell us some of those yeah i think one of the best ones and i can't remember what came first the chicken or the egg but the i think the internship was very important program and it does two things it really helps us in terms of getting a really smart bright staff at a really reasonable price and they and you look at what they've done for us over time they've really done great things and then also we're addressing what we just discussed we're getting them out there in the real world they're you know learning what it's like to make presentations you know we want them to work with commissioners and alloted officials i mean you stop and think that years that you served on the economic development commission we want those in turns in there with you so they so they know what you're like i have so marveled at these kids and know that you have a question do you have do you have first dibs on these kids when you see him in class and you approach them well that's c meetings in this new interim come in they just thursday on the job and i'm telling you they just actually boggle my mind hold a really good sharp and dedicated and they really love what they're doing yeah i think it's a wonderful program that you put together well you know we've done to not only but getting to see some of the the good ones early on when they're out there but look how many we've kept yet all you look at the  really kind of fund look back after all these years and i think we have like thirty years so that are actually out there is city managers or assistants or department heads so and it was interesting i was just at a conference the other day and one of the managers was talking about you know his internship and how we work together what it was thirty some years ago or here is a city manager now in st louis park and there's a lot he can teach me now we're absolutely and you know on this program this program alone i know you would encourage dating you've kept it going a lot i mean i can't tell you how many people come up to me off the street talking about this program they've seen it in this is everything for all down well and also we appreciate the work you do on this because i know you've put a lot of work into it then the pay is not that well just well i'm working on it where it is great for doing it word and and ok let's start out with the manager of the year award now the minnesota city managers association annually has what's called the dr robert a beret award which is named after one of the urban studies directors that kind of developed the program there and yeah a few years ago that i'm sitting there at the conference you don't even know it's coming and all of a sudden there's my whites and did all of the the mayor and  paul rank he was there also and there it was the announce it and it's kind of interesting that you know you can actually have something left going on in the nomination process occurring and you correct so that's got to be a pretty good feather in your hat i was i was very grateful that was made the other one is an outstanding faculty member at hamlin university yeah that one also came out of the blue it's  the public administration program does an annual faculty member the year and you have to be nominated and so forth and one of my students that is now a city administrator is a matter of fact when he just got out of the program jason's emerged his name nominated me and it went through the process so yeah here we are sitting in a vague faculty dinner and i got another surprise there and that was a faculty  come up with something that you don't expect in the neat thing is i learned something i think the team has got to be you better be at top your game when you're in front of the studio yeah that's right you're not going to get by without his they can eat you up in a heartbeat yes right i think they have a few so now another word is the i c m a career or tells about that one this one completely came out of the blue i had no idea that was going on it's named after cooking the hand who actually developed in turn ship programs years ago and its international award and did all of the folks at the oakdale staff and council nominated me and i had no idea this was coming on what does i see i mean stanford that's the international city managers association and so they had the little local thing here and then the annual conference was in milwaukee so i got to receive the award in milwaukee could you really how cool that was very nice ok now the e d eight of minnesota what's that one about oh i just found out about this the economic development association of minnesota has the president's award for career commitment or activities relating to economic development and our community development director is on the board and he was telling me you better get to that conference this year because i don't get there all the time and he said no you know so then he told me that i was going to be getting the president's award and you know it's it's very nice to be recognized by your colleagues in city management and you know these are my colleagues in economic development where i started out and that's probably the association that i've been in the longest so it's very appreciative how do these other people keep it and keep track of you in your complements what are the how do they do this i think some of the things we do are pretty significant you know like the mall satan and so forth and i think you know over the years you know people just kind of keep track of that or people that have been around like a hundred years like me are aware of it and so for then you know a lot of those are career type goals s award so i think it's just you know people have seen some of the stuff we've done and you stay around long enough somebody recognizes so is there a magazine city administrator magazine that highlights things like this mall site and it's sort of their their own newsletter says go out that yeah they'll talk about you know for example the economic development stuff we've done or you know various teaching things that are done and so forth so yes you do get calls from other administrators from different parts of the country or the state for sure about asking your advice or talking to you conferring with you about things that there are problems they're up against yeah we do and you know we're kind of a close knit community so wherever we can help each other we can i had a interesting one at the managers conference i was just at they now have a version and dave shop one of the ones that helped put this together and it's like speed dating except that speed mentoring so you know you have all the old warhorses like me there and some others and you have the new assistants and so forth that are coming up and they spend like eight minutes with each one of talking about things seen what they can pick up and what they can learn ok now what are some of the other innovations that you've come up with on a local level more you know for our community couple interesting things come to mind is one of them we've started  a brown bag lunch for our department heads and some of the up and coming staff and the interns where we focus on the subject that's kind of out of the box something that we normally wouldn't do so all you know we may be talking about coyote management one day and you know the theory and management of gettysburg another day so if we try to do that another one that i know you're familiar with with your role in the economic development commission of the business visits video we've really worked hard on business retention and building relationships with the business community so we have a really neat program where it all the mayor and  e d c cheer and staff member will go out and we don't do the monstrous thing where you do a five hour interview you just building relationships with the business community so they know that you're in the you have their interests at heart yeah and is there anything we can do anything we can follow up on absolutely ok and then what about the some energy programs you got we have we're really making an effort to try to cut our costs as it relates to energy so if you live in oakdale you might see some prius's driving around for the inspections department drive by city hall take a look we've got solar collectors on city hall now and we figured out how to get that done for about twenty percent of what the normal costs would have been sort of really making an effort to try to reduce energy costs and or g usage ok now i'm going to ask a question of you are well a cut above the rest there's no question about that with all these awards and that sort of thing so my question to you is why are you still with the city of oakdale with a population of twenty six thousand and then you probably could very well be qualified for chicago or phoenix or san francisco you know that's a good question that's what happened is that when i got here i assume to know i probably have the management cycle of five years or so and  i absolutely fell in love with this community and i've been fortunate where i have great elected officials to work for and you know in the past and today and of course that makes all the difference in the world and it's a great community you've been involved in the business and are ok of business and professional association for years and the involvement in the activities they're involved in the economic development commission and all of our other commissions people participate and they care about things in this community so i've really fallen in love with with oakdale and you know there's there's things in life that are you know more important than chicago or money and things like that and i've been very happy here and i've been challenged and i've been able to grow and we still have challenges out there saw i'm just as happy as can be that's good and i think you've picked up a few friends along the way too haven't you all the friends and the people i mean in the end it's all about the people and the french you make and this is just this is just been wonderful here this is good i think you're happy doing what you're doing absolutely so important after speaking of that now your wife has gone through a lot of you not being home yeah is it correct yes we give her supportive i wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her that's right f so in her tolerance of the schedules because i know you have a lot of one thousand meetings and that sort of thing up and and i don't want to throw stones what some of the other communities in the immediate area are have have a lot of problems going through administrators in the three four months that's going to be a problem what do you what do you see about that we think well you know again i think for us it goes back to having a really good elected officials to work for and they every one of them they get along they respect each other classic case the other night we had a thing where i know one council member he had the votes three to two he asked the table let's see if we can get the project improved a little bit so you could end up with the unanimous vote so that's the type of working relationship that they have and that's why you don't see a lot of those problems cropping up here that you may see in other areas ok now one last question what is in your future well nothing new for the moment you know i was talking to the consul i said every year i can to get to my birthday we're an age another year and can see how we're doing and you know i have a happy and in my happy and we have interesting things to do and here i'm heading towards my birthday and you know we still have a lot of interesting things to do for the immediate future plan on being here you know down the road i made a you know when i eventually leave do some consulting and keep teaching will kind of see how that plays out but as long as people have me i don't plan to go anywhere yet well we're an asset to the city of oakdale and i certainly appreciate you coming on the program today and i want to thank you for your the things that you've done for oakdale and we just couldn't we thank you so much thank you ok it's time for short break but first here's this month's trivia question the oakdale farmer's market is scheduled to start on wednesday june thirteenth in the city hall east parking lot at fifteen eighty four hadley avenue north the oakdale farmers market serves as a venue for consumers to purchase locally grown products that promote healthy lifestyles while sustaining local agriculture our trivia question is what was the first year for the event was it two thousand and six two thousand and eight or two thousand and ten well the answer later in the program we'll be right back with more of oakdale update in just a minute a survey of our troops serving overseas on twenty five percent say employment is a major concern for when i say come home right now is the unemployment rate but today's better it's up a cent that's twice the average of others but here in the heartland the service members can quickly experience with advanced technology and demonstrate teamwork discipline and leadership under difficult circumstances this year tribute to the troops the armed forces and the upper midwest in the chaco are asking you to har are today's that employers you've welcome back to local update it's now time for a defining development segment each month we profile a different business in our community here's this month's business well real say group has been around for ten ten twelve years this is a new offices one of a forward thinking real estate brokerage we have a lot of traditional real estate companies out there that you probably are familiar with and this is set up to kind of function more in line with how agents operate today versus ten years ago it's a lot more about mobility these guys work off of smart phones and laptops now and we've designed our space to accommodate that from a coffee bar and lounge area to mobile workstations and areas where they just come in for the day and head back out so it eliminates some of the brick and mortar for me as an owner operator and allows us to pay our agents a little more than they would get with a traditional format oakdale summer concert series is scheduled to start on wednesday june thirteenth at the walton park band shell this year's series will be held wednesday evening from seven to eight thirty pm throughout the summer rock brigade will start off this year series on june thirteenth a list of band scheduled to play can be phone on the city's web page another event quickly approaching is yo b p a family picnic on june fourteenth at fire station number one at fiftieth in hadley this is the one meeting the year in which the oakdale business and professional association invites everyone in the community to attend there will be a free lunch and a chance to visit with city and business leaders as well as your neighbors once again the o b p a picnic is june fourteenth from eleven to one at the oakdale fire station at five thousand hedley avenue north summerfest is right around the corner to this annual celebration is held each june at richard walton park events include a parade carnival rides music food and entertainment summerfest runs from june twenty first to the twenty fourth for more information on summerfest visit the city's web site we're just flat out of time but first let's answer a turvy question we asked you what was a first year for the oakdale farmers market the correct answer was be the first farmer's market held in the city was two thousand eight individuals can purchase minnesota grown produce and more each wednesday from three to seven pm through the first part of october it's a great place to pick up a righty a fresh fruits and vegetables about k flowers a loaf of bread dessert and more in addition each week visitors have a chance to register for a gift basket giveaway and to learn a variety of interesting things at the community booth that's all we time for her everyone at the city of oakdale thanks for watching