This Is Local Leadership Without the Ego
Mark Hoppen is a former city manager and Strong Towns member who’s been quietly strengthening communities in Washington state for decades. In this Bottom Up Short, Norm and Mark talk about why someone should pursue a career in city management, what real priorities look like in that role, and how to lead with both care and practicality.
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Norm Van Eeden Petersman 0:00
Hey there, and welcome to Bottom-Up Shorts from Strong Towns. I'm Norm, and after meeting 1000s of members over the years, I keep saying "You've got to hear about this person." That's what this show is all about: quick conversations with everyday people doing meaningful work in their communities. They didn't wait for permission or even a fancy title. They just stepped in and got involved. And today's guest is Mark Hoppen, a longtime city leader who helped towns build stronger foundations through practical leadership. Mark's worked in city hall for decades as a city manager, served on various state boards, and even now in retirement, he's still contributing as a Strong Towns member and a core part of his community. I got to meet Mark during a new member session, and what stood out to me was his remark that he was Strong Towns before Strong Towns existed. And I think that exactly captures the reality that this message and approach is grounded in observation of our places, and then that shared responsibility to make careful use of scarce resources. This approach that isn't exclusive to Strong Towns, but is certainly core to what we are doing. And so I'm excited to introduce Mark to you. Welcome, Mark.
Mark Hoppen 1:14
It's nice to be here, and I look forward to our conversation.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 1:18
Likewise. I want to start with a question based on your career in city management and working within the bureaucracy of local government. I can imagine, over years, you've seen a lot of different things. So, why would someone pursue a career in city management as you have, and what should be some of the priorities that you pursue in that?
Mark Hoppen 1:41
Yeah, well, I'm a lucky person in that I got to work first in municipal governance in my hometown. and I grew up in a boatyard, the last wooden boatyard on the west coast the United States, where the family lived next door and the family was mine. My dad owned the boat shop. My mom worked in it. My brother and I both worked in it. My brother runs it now, as a nonprofit wooden boat center. And we didn't live there after 1978 when my dad sold it, but ultimately the town bought it back for a park. And so I was always oriented towards seeing the health of the hometown realize itself. And when I got the opportunity, after 17 years in education, to switch careers, I did. I took a leap of faith and became a city administrator in the town of Gig Harbor. And that was something I did when the town was 3600 people. Eventually, it was over 10,000. Now it's over 12,000. The budget increased a matter of 12 times while I was there. So we were able to do a lot of things and help the town grow in a way that was sensitive to space and place and people.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 2:53
In what way did building out the community with the tools of local government really help you to have a role in shaping what the future looks like for Gig Harbor and then the other communities that you've also served?
Mark Hoppen 3:05
Well, to be honest about it, when I first started, I was a council member. By 1992, I switched over and became the city administrator. There was an orientation I brought into the job that said I didn't want anything to grow. And when I got the job, I realized that wasn't possible, that things would not work out well if I didn't accommodate growth in a productive way. And so the first thing we did was figure out what utilities had to be enlarged and built, and that included roads and streets and water and sewer. And we set out on that path. The thing I was most interested in was the development of parks, but for the first eight years, all we had was one park and I wasn't very successful at that. And then all of a sudden, after all that time, we had increased retail and annexation on the horizon, and Washington stae is a place where sales tax and property tax are the chief sources of revenue. So we had to figure out a way to increase both in order to be a productive town. And we did, and that was an interesting task. And one of the first things I did was bring a guy to town who was kind of like the Johnny Appleseed of transportation development, named Dan Burden. He's been around a long time. He lives in Port Townsend now, which is to the north of Gig Harbor. And he was from Florida, I think, after a while. Anyway, he came to town and looked at everything and talked to our planning commission and recommended that we do things that we ended up doing to not only make the place prosper, but make it more intimate and more pedestrian. And Gig Harbor has been very successful at that. And also, after about eight years, I started the task, since we didn't have very many employees, of being like a parks director and acquiring park space, taking it to the city council and getting things approved. And when I got done, instead of one park, we had 17. And I mentioned before that our budget increased by a factor of 12. That was pretty dynamic thing, actually, and that enabled a lot of things that produced a better place to live and work. Up until about a year ago, there was even a largesse, even through the dark times in 2008 on. The town prospered. So, you know, interesting thing to do, and I've been lucky enough to live in it the whole time. So I get to watch the mistakes, I get to see the benefits. I get to see the whole the reality of what happened as a result of my actions. It's been edifying and terrifying at the same time.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 5:41
Right. Because these these actions have consequences. There's a city manager in Selkirk, Manitoba, that uses the imagery of time travel. He said, you know, if you're writing a time travel book, the idea is that initial actions of the time traveler have to be very discreet, otherwise they'll have significant sort of knock on consequences years later, and profoundly affect the future. And he said, "I look at my role as a city manager as being that time traveler sent back to make those small changes so that they'll have lasting and enduring consequences long after a lifetime." And it feels like in your experience, you've been able to play a role in, for example, the things like park lands set aside and then turning them into more mature parks to be a value multiplier within the community. Or take a street where you say, "Let's do the things that make the street a great street," and that becomes a value multiplier for the community. Are there other lessons that you feel have not only made Strong Towns resonate with you, but really were consistent with your own personal philosophy of how to build strong places?
Mark Hoppen 6:45
Well, Strong Towns is all about transportation that works for the populace that lives in a place. It's not about building more capacity everywhere all the time. And so, while Gig Harbor as a town had grown, it also was a place that needed to control itself. So some of our service levels in the downtown area were lower than they might be, because throughput was not the issue, quality of life was the issue. And those turned out pretty well. I mean, we've retained our character as a town, but we've also been able to accommodate the realities of growth for the most part. And like every place, we're challenged. Right now, the largesse that was created years ago is pretty much gone. The one time, impetus that resulted in all the parks and other nice things is no longer the same benefit that it was. But the people that are here now that have been running it for all these years are smart and they they're making it work for them.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 7:48
I love that recognition that transportation systems are, you know, a means to build local prosperity. When you really have that as your focus, not just as a tool to get people through, but when you really prioritize "How do we use this in a way that really generates that sense of place, that sense of purpose, that sense of dignity in these spaces?" you create something that everybody realizes is a gift to the community, rather than a drain upon it. Even if you are moving heavy trucks and machinery and things like that through it, you're still doing so in a way that's suited to the scale and speed of the local community.
Mark Hoppen 8:23
Yes. We in Gig Harbor have a major highway, SR 16, that runs the north south length of town for about four and a half miles. And that is something that needs to be surmounted by East West crossings. And so that's been a challenge, and it's still a challenge. But in the town itself, we have no other major highways. The top speed is 35 in a couple places, it's 25 everywhere else. People seem to be able to live with that for the most part. And we've controlled some of the 35 mile an hour areas with the first innovation in this state of roundabouts. And so we've got quite a few roundabouts throughout the town. And at first, people were very resistive of them. But in the long run, the fact that they calm traffic, move more, and made things more sedate actually worked for people pretty well.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 9:22
Before we share a little bit about how you became involved in all of these things, I also wanted to ask about a community building project that you're doing with the wooden boat center. Can you share just about the Gig Harbor Boat Shop and the work that's underway there, and maybe the sense of spirit that it also creates in your place.
Mark Hoppen 9:42
Well, I'll talk about several parks. One was Skansie Brothers Park, which has the last of the net sheds -- because this is a commercial fishing town, with purse seiners and some gill netters and also some fishing tenders that truck fish for a living, like my brother does when he's not running the Gig Harbor Boat Shop. Skansie Brothers Park was a place that a family owned -- it was in downtown, it was about 300 feet in the water -- that the city aspired to, but was privately owned. Ultimately, by hook and by crook, we ended up with that. And I used to think that if there were maybe 500 people there for a concert someday, that would be wonderful. And now there's 5000 to 6000 people every Tuesday in the summer, and they have to shut the street. It's surprising how much people love it. Another place was a farm, Wilkinson Farm, and even after I no longer worked here, I worked on a project with the mayor that supplanted me to design and develop a greenhouse for a community garden on a historic farm park. And then the third link of the chain, all about equal distance, was a boatyard. And the boatyard was called Edon Boat Company. My dad's name was Ed, his partner's name was Don, therefore Edon. And I never met Don, because he was gone by the Korean War when I was a little guy, but my dad kept the name, and the boatyard existed for a long, long time. People valued it a lot. And even though it wasn't in the parks plan element of the comp plan, people decided that they wanted to save it, much to my surprise. And they did. In a year that fire bonds didn't pass, parks bonds didn't pass anywhere from Olympia to Port Townsend, a long stretch on this side of Puget Sound, Edon Boat got saved for Park, the place where I grew up. So now it functions as a nonprofit wooden boat center. Kids learn to build, and they learn to handle wood properly, and families build little boats, and people do big tasks there. And there are lots of volunteers that are adults, that work for free, that donate their skills. And there's people who are profoundly skilled that work there. You can go online, look at it, Gig Harbor Boat Shop. It's pretty neat. It surprises me every time I go in.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 12:05
And what I love about it too, is it anchors your place. There's that defined link between the things that we do and then the things that we value, in terms of being a maritime community, having that responsibility to look out for the well being of the people that are going out on the seas and returning. And also that craft that goes with it, of refining or keeping that lost art alive. Now, if I think about, you know, a dentist, and I asked a dentist, "What's your preferred patient?" That'd be somebody that just sits in the chair and doesn't move. But for a city manager, without casting any aspersions on anyone, what is the ideal council member and what is the ideal community member, from your perspective? I know there's not a single one, but if you had to say, "These are some of the common traits that I have appreciated in council members that I've worked with and likewise with residents," what would some of those things be? Because I think they can serve as an inspiration for some of the folks that are listening here.
Mark Hoppen 13:00
Well, maybe I've just been lucky, but I've worked with pretty good councils everywhere I've worked. And I've worked in six jurisdictions over time. The longest term was in Gig Harbor. The second longest term is in Normandy Park, which is between Burien and Des Moines on Puget Sound, about two and a half miles on Puget Sound. That was my last six years. My first 15 were here, out of 30. I think council members are pretty much the same everywhere in America. And I think the thing to remember is that we're all playing roles. You know, when you're a city manager, you're in a role. When you're a council member, you're in a role. And people even adopt postures within those things that you can identify. There's Mr. No, and there's the progressive person, and everybody can work together if they try. And so I've always been lucky enough to have people feel like they were part of a team that was progressing and going somewhere, and had a vision in place that was theirs, and they adopted it, and I was there to implement it. I was part of that, you know. I think my favorite council members are the ones that are progressive enough to look at the budget and do what is feasible. And not everything, of course, is feasible. But if you're a pragmatist, you can make things work out.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 14:20
Right. And I think one of the things that stands out is local allies are often unlikely allies. You think at some level, there's no way that they can work together. And you're like, "Nope, they do. They are shoulder to shoulder. They're making those things happen."
Mark Hoppen 14:34
Well, we've been lucky in all the towns I've worked in, but in Gig Harbor in particular, that we have a main street association that's called the Waterfront Alliance, and we have a chamber that's very active. We have some nonprofits, not just the Gig Harbor Boat Shop, but Gig Harbor Wild Watch that's about nature conservancy. We have an active conservancy wing in the harbor, a nonprofit that bound itself together with something called the Great Peninsula Conservancy that serves the whole Kitsap peninsula, which is the larger area up to the Good Canal Bridge, which is a very large area in Kitsap County. And we also have a museum, the Harvard History Museum, on which I'm a board member. One of those sailboats that my dad designed is in that museum along with a whole fish boat. So, you know, a 60 foot boat and a 26 foot boat side by side in a room built for them. So there's been a lot of stuff happened here that it wasn't in existence when I started working here in 1992.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 15:20
Yeah. Do you want to share then, as we wrap up, what is it that gives you hope within your community?
Mark Hoppen 15:46
Well, I'm always optimistic that the people who live here value the place, and those people show up at the strangest times in the most unusual ways to do good work. And I haven't had anything but a volunteer role for a very long time now, but I talked to the current city administrator and council members on a fairly regular basis, and I try to stay out of their way, but I make my opinions known, and they listen responsibly. I just think that things have a way of perpetuating themselves when you're positive. If you see a good future, if you have a good future in your comprehensive plan, and you budget to try to do what you can pragmatically, then good people show up and do good work. And that's what I've always found.
Norm Van Eeden Petersman 16:40
Yeah, I love that. Well, folks, that was Mark Hoppen, someone who spent decades helping communities build that stability and resilience that we need in our places. What I love about our whole movement of Strong Towns members all over is that just this week, I wrote about a 17 year old documenting the needs in this community. And now here we get to hear from Mark, who's in his 70s, doing similar things, identifying what people in the community need and working towards that. And so if his story struck a chord, share it with a friend. These are the kinds of grounded leaders that we love to highlight. So thanks for listening to Bottom-Up Shorts. I'm Norm. I'll see you next time. Take care and take care of your places.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
Gig Harbor Boatshop (site)
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Norm Van Eeden Petersman (LinkedIn)
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