GovLove - A Podcast About Local Government · Engaging Local Government Leaders (ELGL)

The Mayor Has a Hammer and Other Poetry with Jim Schutz, JMSB Strategies

·59 min·2 clips

The hardest part of leaving isn't the job—it's accepting the show goes on without you.

GovLove talks with Jim about local government poetry. He says the poems began when he wanted to process the emotion of leaving a long government career. An article felt too small for that, so he started turning the little stories he had been dictating into poems. City managers were the first audience he had in mind. He wanted them to feel seen and appreciated. The audience then grew. It expanded to all local government staff. It also became a window into local government for people outside that world. Jim describes the loneliness that city managers can feel, even in a crowd. He returns to that feeling more than once. He says he had about a year left in his career when he started writing the poems. He loved the work. He says he would not change a thing if he could do it all again. That affection sits beside a harder reality. Public trust in government keeps going down. Political polarization keeps making the job harder for city managers and other city staff. The poems become a way to hold both truths at once. They carry gratitude for the career and discomfort with the climate around it. The conversation leaves the sense that the writing was meant to honor the people doing the work and give them a place to recognize themselves.

As heard by us

A thoughtful look at city management, loneliness, and the poems that grew from both.

GovLove takes a reflective turn as Jim Schutz traces how local government poetry grew out of a long career transition. The conversation follows that shift from a magazine article that felt too narrow to poems meant to hold the emotion of leaving government work, then onward from…

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When city-manager loneliness starts sounding like a writing prompt.

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