Brautigam leaves city manager role with no regrets

After 12 years on the job, Boulder City Manager Jane Brautigam — who retired at the end of October — has no regrets.

While she doesn’t believe she accomplished everything she wanted to do while working with the city of Boulder, she is excited to embark on her new adventure.

“I am very very sad to leave,” she said. “I will miss the people and I will miss the intellectual stimulation and the hard issues we deal with.”

She also said that it was time for “new ideas and new visions to take over.”

At age 70, Brautigam said it was time for her to step back and spend more time with her family and doing the things she loves to do, such as hiking in Boulder’s beautiful outdoor spaces.

“I feel super lucky that I have the privilege of living in Boulder. I enjoy hiking and all the great community has to offer,” she said. 

Boulder Mayor Sam Weaver worked with Brautigam for seven of her 12 years with the city. 

“She is a very gracious leader. She leads with kindness and empathy, and she is an extremely hard worker,” he said. “And, I will say that she has been thrown a lot of curveballs since she took over as city manager.”

Those include the disastrous floods of 2013, the Great Recession and more recently, COVID-19. 

“It has been a pleasure to work with Jane in many different aspects but the area where she has shined the most is in response to crises and in employee development and reorganizing our city structure to make a little more sense,” Weaver said.

He added that she has not only been a mentor to many women in municipal government but a role model.

“She has gone out of her way to cultivate women leaders within the organization,” he said.

There are certain issues Brautigam wishes she could have seen to completion, such as the municipalization of Boulder’s electric supply or transportation improvements, but she said she is content to watch from the sidelines. 

“I feel like we are in the midst of doing great things, and I feel I’ve made an impact and had some good accomplishments in my time,” she said.

A native of Philadelphia, Brautigam attended Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, for her undergraduate degree and the University of Pennsylvania law school in Philadelphia. When she graduated from law school 44 years ago, she moved to Colorado to work as an attorney. She fell in love with the area before moving to Detroit for a couple of years. 

It was in Detroit that she developed her love of city government. She had the opportunity to act as city attorney, advising the city council at its meetings. 

“It was such a great opportunity. It was where I fell in love with local government. I just love it,” she said.

After Michigan, she moved back to Colorado, serving as the city attorney for Greenwood Village and Loveland. While in Loveland she had the opportunity to serve as interim city manager and ultimately was awarded the position.  

“I was tired of being city attorney and loved the business of local government and wanted to have more of an impact in that fashion,” she said.

Before becoming Boulder’s city manager, she spent six years as city manager of Dublin, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. Each city is different and faces its own challenges. That’s why when she takes on a new position, she likes to spend time understanding what the issues are in the community and not come in with preconceived notions.

“The thing that impelled me to come here is I wanted to come back to Colorado. My kids were here, and I had been in a city that was very wealthy but wasn’t speaking to the social justice piece of my heart. I wanted to get to a city that cared about that. I knew Boulder was leading in that area and in environmental sustainability, which wasn’t much of a big thing in Ohio,” she said. “It was exciting to come to a place that cared deeply about both of those things.”

Her first experience in Boulder was with the discussions about whether to municipalize Boulder’s electric utility. 

“It was just an honor to be part of that conversation and make progress on that,” she said. Other issues dealt with open space, the environment and affordable housing.

In Dublin, Ohio, the local governments receive revenue from having high-paying businesses in their community. Colorado doesn’t do that. The state bases its budget on retail and sales taxes. 

“When I came here, I was surprised to see that the city of Boulder is less focused on economic development than I was used to. Boulder has a real vision for what it wants to be. Boulder wants a community that is sustainable,” Brautigam said, meaning it equally balances the economy with social equity and the environment. 

Businesses and entrepreneurs attracted to the Boulder area come here because they want to be a part of what makes Boulder special.

“It feels like we have a special sauce here in Boulder that really nurtures up and coming and upstart creative new companies,” she said. “And that once they find a footing here, they stay here, and they love it.”

Brautigam added that the city obviously plays its part with regulations, which may put it at odds with businesses at times, but “the entrepreneurial community is very collegial and works with one another and supports one another so the ecosystem we have works really well. It is kind of exhilarating to be part of it.”

One of her main roles as city manager was to encourage new people within the organization to learn their roles and assume leadership responsibility. Brautigam said that this was a major focus for her during her 12-year tenure. 

“I wanted our organization to be a value-based organization so people know what the right thing is to do when we get into different circumstances. I feel I’ve done a good job there,” she said.

She is proud of her work with the city’s finance department, working to leave the city in a better financial position than when she started, but she is the first to admit there is always more work that can be done in that area. 

In the future, she believes Boulder will need to enter a period of introspection to determine the next great thing Boulder is going to be. 

“We have to care about systemic racism in the world, which is where we as a community have fallen short. There are things we can do better to turn things around,” she said. 

The Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan has created a situation that has made it “harder for diverse populations to feel welcome here, find a home here or afford a place to live here,” she said. “We need to take a hard look at that and find ways to open up and be a community that is more welcoming and that really allows everyone to belong,” she said.

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