Maggie Dobbs is a trained city planner (Rutgers) who spent a decade writing comprehensive plans across Montgomery County before stepping into her current role as Borough Manager of Narberth, Pennsylvania, a half-square-mile community tucked inside Lower Merion Township just outside of Philadelphia. She arrived after a period of leadership turnover. What she found was not a small job. It was a dense one.

Host Brandon Ford and co-host Nancy Hess have a wide ranging conversation with Maggie that moves through the real experience of borough management: the math of running a full municipal government — police, public works, library, eleven miles of road — with fifteen people and a fraction of a township’s budget; the intimacy that makes boroughs special and the same intimacy that makes criticism land close to the heart; and the reality that wearing every hat in the building demands more knowledge, not less, than specializing in a larger organization.

Maggie is candid about walking into a community that had cycled through five managers in four years, what it took to steady that ship, and why her focus is on building standard operating procedures so the day-to-day can run itself. Along the way, the crew explores Narberth’s housing story — how a historically working-class rail town became the highest median sales price in Montgomery County — and what that shift means for a community once referred to as “Mayberry,” still sorting out who it is.

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Five Realities Before You Take the Seat

1. Your job will crowd out your job. Protect space for strategic work.
2. SOPs are not paperwork. They are oxygen.
3. Fill your blind spots early. Pride is expensive.
4. Proactive information reduces political friction.
5. Borough leadership is not smaller. It’s closer.

0:00 – Introducing Maggie and Narberth

1:18 – The “donut hole” geography inside Lower Merion

2:09 – Maggie’s path: NJ Dept. of Agriculture → Rutgers → Planning

3:30 – Montgomery County Planning Commission & contract planning model

5:49 – Writing four comprehensive plans; interviewing...

There is a polite fiction in local government that serving “at the pleasure of the governing body” rests securely on mutual trust. Often it does. Increasingly, it can feel more fragile.

In today’s political climate, the employment relationship between elected officials and their chief administrative officer deserves a closer examination. What protections actually exist? Who advocates for the manager when circumstances shift?

In this episode of Generation on the Rise, Eden Ratliff and Dave Pribulka sit down with Brad Gotshall to explore what it means to become, in his words, a “free agent.” They examine contracts and severance, and they also confront questions of reputation, professional identity, and the personal weight of transitions that can be political, strategic, or simply inevitable.

MuniSquare is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

1. 00:00 – Cold open, book banter, introductions
2. 04:30 – Brad’s background: elected official at 17 to professional manager
3. 09:30 – Transition to Warren County and “free agency”
4. 11:30 – Protecting yourself as a manager: personal and professional buckets
5. 13:30 – Contract negotiations: learning the hard way
6. 16:00 – Do managers need representation?
7. 19:00 – The loneliness of severance negotiations
8. 22:00 – Lower Paxton: no contract, negotiated exit
9. 26:00 – Recruiter’s role in negotiations
10. 31:00 – Severance pushback and board dynamics
11. 37:00 – Creative contract structures (Rehoboth example)
12. 39:30 – Should managers use agents?
13. 41:30 – Legal review vs. negotiation support
14. 43:00 – Preserving reputation under NDAs
15. 45:30 – Building a personal brand before crisis hits
16. 48:00 – No-fault divorce vs. political dismissal
17. 50:00 – Wrap-up and Part Two teaser