Monroe hires new City Administrator; Very experienced in Economic Development

Monroe has hired a new city administrator, Mark Vahlsing from Pine Island, Mn. Click on the post for the full story in the Monroe Times.

I checked on the web site of Pine Island, Mn., and they have a very straight forward web site with all the minutes of all council meetings, and also had all the municipal ordinances.

The new city administrator of Monroe also will also be performing the tasks of clerk-treasurer and human resource management as well as economic development and general management. I am not sure how common it is for city administrators to have this combination of responsibilities. It appears that Monroe will be saving some salary expense since they did replace a couple positions with their new administrator, but he is going to have a lot of duties.

It is comforting to The Observer that the new administrator began his career in New Prague, Mn. as an assistant city administrator. New Prague is the home of the famous New Prague Hotel, a classic German hotel with ornate honeymoon suites that the Observer and spouse escaped to during a brief honeymoon just 27 years ago. After feasting in The New Prague Hotel on German cuisine, we walked to the local theatre to see John Belusi in "Animal House." Yes, it was quite shocking for its time.

All in all, I feel that this guy will fit in with Monroe. He will have to get used to Berghoff beer and some extensive cheese, but I think he can do it.

Now that Monroe has gone city administrator, it is clear that those frontier days when city council members ran things loosly with just casual administration are gone. Make a note of it.