Council promotes Muske
By Bert Lehman
Clintonville Common Council voted to hire Caz Muske to fill the vacant city administrator position.
She has served as the deputy city administrator and Public Works director in Clintonville since early 2020.
Muske was promoted at the Dec. 14council meeting. She replaces Sharon Eveland, who resigned in November to take a similar position in a municipality near Madison.
Muske told the Clintonville Tribune-Gazette she is “thrilled” to be hired as city administrator.
She said becoming a city administrator was her career goal.
“Circa 2015 is when I started in local government,” Muske said. “I actually was in health and fitness prior and my first introduction, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I fell in love with the (city management) profession. I saw a lot of concerns with leadership of city managers and administration, so I wanted to be the change of that. I would say that by at least 2016 I knew that this is what I wanted to pursue.”
When Muske found out Eveland was going to leave Clintonville, she said she pursued the city administrator position, and city council was receptive to her becoming city administrator.
“For me, I saw that as an opportunity, and one of the main reasons why I stayed in Clintonville, knowing that eventually I could have that opportunity because this is my career goal,” Muske said. “I’d like to retire in Clintonville if they’ll have me. So, it was kind of a collaborative of both. I had a lot of support from the elected officials.”
‘Amazing people’
She said Clintonville has “amazing people” working for the city.
“It makes my job much easier when I have awesome people that I can work with,” Muske said. “Additionally, I have my husband who works for the city of Waupaca. We have a 4-year-old. As a young family, this community offers a lot – great schools, parks and recreation, a lot of activities for our son. So, we can definitely see growing our family here, and that’s pretty important for me. As I said, I’d love to retire in Clintonville if they’ll have me.
“I think if you want to have meaningful change in a community, you have to be there more than five years. My intention is to grow with this community and really capitalize on a lot of the assets, the history we have. This community has so much history, from our airport, to the Four-Wheel Drive, there are a lot of things that we can really enhance and capitalize on and I really look forward to being a part of that.”
Muske had been serving as interim city administrator since Eveland left.
“There are a lot of things that are lower priority that I haven’t been able to deal with, but I definitely have been hitting the ground running and just keeping that momentum going,” Muske said.
Muske said she feels her time spent in the deputy city administrator and Public Works director positions will help her fill the city administrator role.
“The main thing is all the crossover with the other departments that I worked with,” she said. “I gained their trust, and they very much support me in this role, and that’s huge. Having that internal support is awesome.”
Being approachable
When asked what her style of city management is, Muske said sh feels she is approachable.
“I think I’m very open to different ideas and working with individuals, which is key,” Muske said. “You have to have a team and you have to work well together. I’m not going to do everything by myself, so for me, I’m heavily leaning on my hired professionals in their craft to help us move forward. So, very much a team-oriented atmosphere.”
For the moment, Muske said getting caught up and familiar with different aspects of the city is her current goal, but she also has long-term goals she’d like to achieve.
“Really it’s learning the intentions of our elected officials,” Muske said. “I would like to go through some strategic planning process. As you know, we have an election coming up in April, so I think really getting our elected officials onboard with kind of the direction they want to take the city. And then tailoring our operations, our finances to those goals. Right now, we’re trying to get the right people in the right places, and then once we have a new slate of elected officials we can really dive into where do we want to be in three, five, ten years.
“That’s the main thing. The organization and our elected officials need to be on the same page. And that’s going to be a big driver in the next couple of years to make sure we have that layout.”
When Muske says the city is trying to get the right people in the right places, she is referring to who will handle her previous duties. In addition to being the director of the Public Works Department, Muske was also responsible for applying for grants for the city.
Muske said the city’s Personnel Committee understands the value of contracting for some of the larger grant applications. Contracting grant work has historically been done by the city for larger grants.
“We’ll probably look to continue that trend, and still do some in-house,” Muske said. “Because of my knowledge of grants, we’ll probably continue to do some smaller ones in-house and collaborate on them.”
She added that she will continue to manage the Clintonville Municipal Airport.
Public Works
Regarding the Public Works Department, Muske said the Personnel Committee is leaning toward hiring a Public Works director who would oversee the Public Works Department as well as the Parks and Recreation Department.
“It seems they want to post it (Public Works director position) to have the option of internal or external candidates,” Muske said. “I believe that’s what we’re leaning toward.”
In addition to how the Public Works Department is structured, Muske knows there are other challenges ahead for the city.
“I think we need to be creative and responsible with our finances,” Muske said. “I believe that once we figure out the direction of our elected officials, taking into consideration our comprehensive plan we did in 2018 and some of the other studies, like the downtown study, focusing on that, and not losing sight of that anchor. I think it’s very easy, especially with turnover of elected officials to go 1,000 different directions. My job, and my hope, is for us to focus on what we want to work towards. That means being creative with our finances.
“Creativity and partnering with other entities are going to be key for us. We have great organizations. We have a great school district. We’ve already had conversations about potentially partnering facilities in the future. Working with the county potentially, partnering with facilities. I think there are a lot of opportunities for savings with our finances. We just need to find those opportunities and work with those different entities.”