New Petaluma city manager takes the reins

If there’s an archetype for the modern city manager, Peggy Flynn doesn’t mind being a little different.

While most come from a finance or planning background, Flynn’s began in journalism and communications, coupled with an ever-growing affinity for local government.

As Flynn, 52, settled into her office at Petaluma City Hall this week as the new city manager, following recent retiree John Brown after a decade as the top unelected official, her first priority is launching the kind of public engagement campaigns that have marked her career as a public servant.

“My philosophy is we work for you. We work for the residents and businesses here,” Flynn said. “We need to have that two-way (discussion) and we need to know what’s going on. I know that’s the council’s priority and I know that’s my priority. I know staff is excited, too.

“It’s government for the people and by the people, and how do you get people excited about government, and understanding very complex issues.”

Flynn was selected by the city council and a subcommittee tasked with finding the successor to Brown after his retirement in November. The city contracted with a recruiting firm, Wendi Brown Creative Partners, to conduct a nationwide search that took four months to complete.

In the end, it turned out the ideal candidate was living on a small, Chileno Valley cattle ranch in southwest Petaluma, working as the assistant city manager in Novato.

Petaluma Assistant City Manager Scott Brodhun served in an interim role until Flynn took over Monday morning.

“She refers to this as her dream job, and I think that will be really helpful to see that enthusiasm about serving the community in Petaluma,” said Brodhun, who has worked in the city manager’s office since 2009. “That’s critical, and Peggy’s positive communication skills are already readily apparent. Her willingness to be responsive to staff, to the community will really support an effective delivery of services.”

Flynn was born in Denver and raised in Bloomington, Ill. She attended Illinois State for undergrad but later pursued a change of scenery after a divorce shifted her focus to her 3-year-old son. She packed their things and moved out west, enrolling in San Jose State where she majored in journalism and minored in political science.

It was a local politics course that inspired Flynn to start exploring how effective outreach could help demystify public agencies, she said. She leveraged an internship with the San Jose Redevelopment Agency into a full-time position, and even turned down a master’s fellowship opportunity to start her career right away.

Flynn was an integral part of connecting the state’s largest redevelopment agency to its local constituency. She helped launch the Strong Neighborhoods Initiative Program, which helped thousands of residents get behind a $250 million revitalization project that transformed a third of San Jose’s suburban districts.

She opened a downtown information center on the first floor of the agency’s building and invited residents to come in and ask every question they had about government. They were the first RDA to start putting meeting agendas online – even before the local city council did, she said.

“It was a dynamic organization and a dynamic time, and it was a great place to cut my teeth into communications and government,” Flynn said. “I’ve still never had a boring day ever in my career.”

After three years with the Santa Clara Valley Water District, she took a break from public service to help care for her mother in Bloomington, Ill., who had stage four breast cancer.

Flynn opened up a fitness studio on Main Street, but word spread about her redevelopment background, and suddenly she was thrust onto the local downtown association board where she helped craft a five-year plan to breathe some life into the city’s urban core.

“It elevated the notion of management (for me),” Flynn said.

After her mother died, Flynn packed her Pilates equipment into a Penske truck and returned to the Bay Area in late 2008, at the height of the Great Recession. She was an economic development consultant for San Mateo until a communications and legislative management position with the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District opened up, an experience which she said helped round out her land use portfolio.

It was during her time in Sonoma County where she met her now husband, Lex McCorvey, a fourth-generation Petaluma rancher. Flynn has been in Petaluma for over 10 years.

She said she took some time off to learn how to maintain a ranch and consult on the side before joining the staff in Novato in 2012 where her background in economic development and community engagement practices led to the redevelopment of the former Hamilton Air Force Base and the construction of the downtown Novato SMART station.

Novato officials said Flynn was instrumental in the successful passage of Measure C, a quarter-cent sales tax in 2015 to bolster city services.

During the campaign, her goal was to engage residents and keep them involved in local politics well after the vote by holding neighborhood town halls at pizza shops and small businesses, Flynn said. She presented Novato’s fiscal sustainability plan, and actively negotiated with residents on what level they’d like to see specific services at to help better inform the council’s decisions.

Holding similar town halls is an early priority for Flynn to help lay a more conversational rapport with Petaluma residents. She also plans to upgrade the city website to make information more accessible, and increase social media activity on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram where many residents turn for news and information.

Providing public notices in Spanish for Latino residents, who make up 22 percent of the local population, will also be a focus, she said.

“Our police do this really well – like coffee with a cop – but I’d like to have those times where we’re just out there round tabling it and talking to folks open-ended like, ‘Here’s some of the things we’re doing and what’s in the works,’” Flynn said. “I think with the craziness on the national level that people really feel that they want to make a difference, and it’s so hard to make a difference on the national or even state level, but guess what, they can make a difference here.”

At the city council meeting on Monday, Flynn was sworn in with her 12-year-old grandson Nolan standing by her side. Her inauguration received a standing ovation from the audience in the council chambers, which included senior officials from the city’s public safety agencies.

Also in the crowd was her son, Cliff, and daughter-in-law, Julie.

As Flynn comes up to speed on Petaluma’s most pressing issues, identifying citizen priorities through surveys and outreach campaigns, she said sustainability will dictate the city’s decision-making processes going forward.

“I think it’s going to be super important for us to leave no stone unturned right now and figure out … how to do a lot with a little,” she said. “I think we have to be engaged in our community because it’s floating out there – is there a sales tax, is there not a sales tax? Organizational sustainability is going to be super important to make sure we’re delivering those services. So better roads, programs that the community relies upon, affordable housing, those are key community issues.”

(Contact News Editor Yousef Baig at yousef.baig@arguscourier.com or 776-8461, and on Twitter @YousefBaig.)