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In this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck is joined by Carlee Alm-LaBar and Kevin Blanchard, former city staff members in Lafayette, Louisiana. Carlee is now Strong Towns’ chief of staff, while Kevin is CEO of the nonprofit Downtown Lafayette, which promotes infrastructure development and business revitalization.

Carlee and Kevin discuss the challenges of balancing competing demands and priorities when working in local government, particularly when trying to make smarter financial decisions. They also share recommendations for how local governments and residents can work together constructively.

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  Chuck Marohn 0:00

  Hey everybody this Chuck Marohn, welcome back to the strong towns podcast. We've been talking the last few weeks about budgets and finance decoder and city politics as it relates to we're going broke. No, we're not. I wanted to get two insiders on the show, people that I have spent time with in City Hall trying to decipher budgets and figure out what was going on. Carlee Alm-LaBar

  you might know as our chief of staff here at strong town. She had a long history of doing many, many, many things, but including time in city hall in lafat, Louisiana, her partner in crime, I think, is the best way to describe it, or her, her close colleague, who, every time I met with Carlee, was in the room as well as Kevin Blanchard. Kevin held many, many different positions inside City Hall. He's been on the podcast before, but now he's back. Kevin, welcome back to the Strong Towns podcast.

  Kevin Blanchard 1:05

  Thanks, man. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Carly, nice

  Chuck Marohn 1:09

  to you know, you and I spent three days together this week, but it's nice to have you on to talk.

  Carlee Alm-LaBar 1:14

  So yeah, I'm excited too. Let's, let's start

  Chuck Marohn 1:18

  this way. You. You both were in senior roles in the city of Lafayette, Louisiana. And I think by way of telling people like, what those roles were, I think the interesting thing to me is, what were your expectations coming in? And then what were the things that you kind of immediately figured out once you got into place? And maybe Kevin, I think maybe we'll start with you. I know your background. You're an attorney, and you were working as a journalist when you got brought into City Hall. Is that right? Yeah.

  Kevin Blanchard 1:47

  So I started my career as a journalist covering local government, and so the mayor that Carly and I both ended up working for at the same time was kind of the guy I was covering. And so you know, you kind of see the issue from the outside, certainly trying to stay objective about everything, but getting actually into City Hall and getting the phone calls and having to deal with the council folks and putting the budget together and everything else, makes everything a lot more real, because you realize just the sheer number of trade offs and kind of just the general triage nature of the entire thing, right? I used to joke in the different contexts when I was newspaper reporter, and people would be like, oh, you know, it's just a conspiracy to like, you know, do whatever. And I'd be like, You have no idea how close we come not to being able to get the newspaper out every day like we lack. We lack the ability to pull off any kind of conspiracy, right? And it's kind of like that. That was my experience, at least in the local government, a lot of folks trying to do the right thing, but just up against it, just pretty much at every turn.

  Carlee Alm-LaBar 2:59

  Carly, I would say the same thing. So my experience inside City Hall was a little bit circuit wandering, I guess is a better word. So I was really brought in more on the communication side inside the mayor's office, and then slowly inherited more and more planning and development responsibilities, and just as I got deeper and deeper into it, realizing time and time again, as Kevin said, how many good people there were, but so many conflicting motivations and directions that that really made performing the government, performing at a high level really challenging Sometimes, and so, you know, trying to interpret, you know, really good people trying to interpret a lot of different directions, and really trying to make the best for everyone, which wasn't always the best for the person they were working with, or, you know, trying to support. So it was just, you know, every day was an adventure, working inside city government with a lot of a lot of competing demands and challenges. And

  Chuck Marohn 4:07

  I can I dig into that, because you both said this, and I feel like, obviously, there's elected officials, there's the general public, there's other staff members, there's rules and regulations you have to follow. You both have said, like, there's a, you know, we're trying to make good decisions, but there's all these things. I think people outside would say, well, that's politics. Like, that's what, you know, that's, that's where you're all compromised. How would you describe that push and pull? Like, what are some examples of where those things run into each other. Carly, maybe you can, you can start with that one. Then we'll go to Kevin.

  Carlee Alm-LaBar 4:44

  Oh gosh, it is. It is. I mean, you know, so for a couple of years that I was in government, the last couple years, I was the planning director, and I think that's where you see a lot of tensions, is, you know, you have things lik