Busse wraps up decades of public service

It’s not the career she planned, but on Friday, Owatonna City Administrator Kris Busse will be looking at more than 30 years of public service from a rearview mirror.

Hired in 2007, Busse will be honored today (Wednesday) during a reception held 4:30-6:30 p.m. at the Owatonna Arts Center. She’ll cap off her 18 years with the city on Aug. 8.

The first in her family to attend college, Busse had developed an interest in law while working part time in the summer for an attorney. But the time commitment gave her pause.

“Four years when you’re 17 years old seems like a lifetime, right?” she said. “So, I went to a community college in Inver Hills, because I thought, I can do two years.”

With her paralegal degree in hand, Busse decided she could do two more years. She transferred other Hamline University, “partly because they had a law school and partly because they took all my credits.”

That decision changed the trajectory of her career path.

‘I was hooked’

Busse majored in political science, and Hamline included an internship as a requirement for graduation. Through her boyfriend–now husband–she connected with the city manager in her hometown of Prior Lake.

“I worked with Mike McGuire through an internship and then through that following summer,” she recalled, “and I was hooked at that point. I thought, what a great career. It’s got a lot of variety… I found it very exciting.”

After Prior Lake, Busse signed on as assistant city administrator in Austin, a town five times larger than the one she left. The administrator there “looked really old to me. He had to stop and take a heart pill, because he was having heart issues.”

While she worried about losing her boss before she could learn the basics, Darrell Stacy hung on, eventually retiring in 1991.  

“He was a good boss, who was very knowledgeable, too,” Busse said.

By the time Stacy retired, Busse knew she wanted to stay in greater Minnesota, working in smaller cities.

“There’s a lot of advantages, because you can be a greater part of the community,” she said. “I liked being a part of the community and living and working in it.”

While she wasn’t selected to replace Stacy, Busse landed another opportunity and moved on to the Waseca city manager post. Her daughter, Brooke, had been born in Austin, and she was pregnant with son Jake when she interviewed for the Waseca job.

Though she worried that might cost her the job, city officials were supportive, and Busse ultimately stayed there another 10 years.

But she always had her eye on Owatonna.

“I thought it was a great community, just a beautiful community, very progressive, just having it all,” she said. “They’ve got it figured out.”

Public scrutiny

Her first shot at a job with the city didn’t pan out. When the administrator position opened up again, it was an awkward time–Brooke was a high school sophomore; Jake, an eighth grader.

But she couldn’t pass up the opportunity, because “people tend to stay in these jobs, if they’re able to.”

Busse went for it and was hired in December 2007; then Mayor Tom Kuntz took her to a Rotary Club meeting during her first day on the job. And she didn’t step into the role with goals and visions for managing the city.

“I think administrators are most effective working together with the elected officials,” she said. “That’s who the people elected, and you work with them to develop the strategic plan, the vision… it’s not just one single person’s idea.”

Busse said the work has been roughly the same over her career. What has changed, though, is the community she serves.

“I think the public scrutiny has gotten sharper and, I think, more demanding,” she said. “You want the public engaged, and sometimes, it turns adversarial right away, which is disappointing. And that’s something for us to work on as an organization, to try and involve people, but I think people are more polarized now.”

Busse said she has learned a few ways to handle those confrontational situations: to separate yourself from what feels like an attack and know it’s not personal; put the issue, whatever it is, into perspective; and just keep communicating.

When it comes to communication, she added, “earlier is much better than later… It’s something I don’t think you’re ever done with, and it’s just being really, really intentional and clear in your communications as well.”

‘Special sauce’

Even with those occasional conflicts, Owatonna is a special place, Busse said. But what makes it special?

“That’s the secret sauce, we always talk about that, and I don’t know,” she said. “Is it the beauty? Is it the deep community involvement? You can do a fundraiser here, and everybody’s done stories on how successful they are…All of these kinds of worthy causes, people in Owatonna support that. Even with the new high school, everybody dug deep and met that challenge. It’s just a very caring community.”

Among her own points of pride, Busse counts the collaborative workplace culture that city has built, which was “wholly supported” by the city council and department heads, as well as staff.

“I think that’s really going to be a game-changer for Owatonna going forward,” she said.

She also mentioned the downtown revitalization and Cedar Avenue reconstruction, the reimagined, more pedestrian-friendly Main Street–as well as the less glamorous wastewater treatment plant expansion, which was awarded $22 million in state bonding to not only address Owatonna’s future needs, but also provided a regional solution for Medford.

Busse is also proud of the city’s planning efforts, including its first-ever comprehensive plan, which will guide development over the next 20 years. She said the industrial additions and expansions–including Viracon, Kamp Automation, and CDI–show other entrepreneurs that the city is a good place to do business.

Busse clearly credits a strong team effort in every one of those accomplishments. And a member of that team, assistant city administrator Jenna Tuma, will carry the city forward through its next big project: a new public safety center.

It’s the one piece of business Busse said she’s leaving unfinished, but there are other voices calling; namely, those of her grandchildren–one already here and another arriving soon. And her son is getting married in September.

“And then, you know, I’d like to take one of those Viking River cruises,” Busse said. “That’s always been on my list.”