Jason Gage says leaving Springfield ‘didn’t feel right’

From his capacious fourth-floor office suite, Springfield City Manager Jason Gage directs the day-to-day operations of a city with a half-billion-dollar annual budget and a staff of more than 2,100.

Despite his high-profile job, Gage is someone who usually stays out of the limelight. However, in July, he made the news as one of four finalists for a city manager position in Manhattan, Kansas. That’s a much smaller city, with about 54,000 residents, compared with Springfield’s 170,000, according to Census Bureau figures.

An initial pool of 50 was winnowed down to the finalist quartet, and having served as a city manager for over 20 years, Gage’s curriculum vita set him apart from his competition, with seven times the city manager experience and more than 10 times the budget of his closest competition.

Still, Gage withdrew from the Manhattan candidate pool after a two-day on-site interview process but before that city’s council began its deliberations.

“After weighing all factors, leaving Springfield just didn’t feel right,” he said in an email at the time.

He elaborated in an in-person interview a week later. Gage said his sons live within an hour of Manhattan, which was a driver in pursuing the role in Kansas. Asked if he could see himself staying in his current role for the long haul or if he was interested in finding a new opportunity, Gage responded that when he was initially hired, he came into the job with the thought that he could one day retire here. Gage is 55.

“As you know, Springfield’s a pretty dynamic community,” said Gage, noting he is not pursuing other jobs. “We constantly have projects that impact the community – some larger than others, but we have a high volume of projects, and some impactful ones.”

He gave the example of Renew Jordan Creek, a $38 million effort to restore a buried creek to the surface and create a vibrant green space in the city’s downtown.

“I really enjoy the projects that have the most impact to people, and I like to see those completed,” he said.

Springfield Mayor Ken McClure said he was thrilled that Gage was staying on in his role.

“He, in my opinion, is the best-informed person that I have come in contact with in my career,” said McClure, citing Gage’s depth of understanding of municipal law and practices.

Springfield uses the council-manager form of government, meaning council is the governing body, similar to a corporate board of directors, and the city manager has a role akin to that of a CEO.

Asked if he believes the city manager is here for the long haul, now that he has signaled his interest in a move, the mayor said he couldn’t speculate.

“I can’t project how long he’ll be here,” McClure said. “How long he wants to work here is not a question for me, but I hope he’s here for a long time. We’ve got a comprehensive plan that we need to implement, and it sets out 20 years. We’re just starting that.”

Gage earns just shy of $268,000 in his role and typically gets a raise with each new contract, with a $21,000 boost approved by City Council in 2023. His beginning base salary in 2018 was $220,000. His current contract term ends next month, on Sept. 18, and city officials say the salary negotiation process has not yet started.

Average tenure
While Gage has the enthusiastic support of McClure, Councilmember Craig Hosmer often challenges the city manager in council meetings with questions and repeated requests for information.

Hosmer told SBJ that he was not surprised at Gage’s application elsewhere.

“I don’t know how long the longest city manager served, but Jason’s been here five or six years,” he said. “That’s probably about an average tenure.”

Hosmer said Gage is excellent at the nuts and bolts of city government. He added, though, that Gage is not always forthcoming with information.

“If we don’t have the information, how are we supposed to make decisions?” he said. “If we only get the information he wants to give us, that’s sort of a control issue.”

A former state legislator, Hosmer said he thought being a member of a nine-member council governing city matters would result in speedier decision-making.

“I think for me there’s been some dissatisfaction on the pace of movement on chronic issues,” he said. “It seems like we’ve got some low-hanging fruit that we could make some movement on – homelessness, poverty, bad housing, crime, primary enforcement. We’ve been talking about rental inspections for years and talking about finally getting on short-term rentals.”

Decision to stay
Gage said he takes pride in a reduced crime rate in the city – a 30% drop from 2020 until the first quarter of this year, despite a chronic understaffing issue in the city’s police department.

“I don’t believe we are even close to where we need to be, but we’re headed in the right direction,” he said. “Quite honestly, we’re probably headed there faster than many other cities that grapple with the same challenges.”

Poverty is also down from a high of about 25% to around 20% today, he said. “That is still too high, but that’s a pretty significant decline as well,” he said.

Census Bureau figures back up the rate cited by Gage, citing a 20.3% rate in 2022, down 3.75 percentage points from the year before. Infrastructure improvements, including work on roads, sewers and parks, are also a point of pride for Gage, especially with the state legislature’s support that has come through for local projects – over $40 million in the last three years, Gage said. He noted that at the suggestion of former council member and state representative Craig Fishel, the city put together its first transformational projects proposal to submit to its local legislative delegation, and the result has been direct appropriations from the state for city sports complexes, the Jefferson Avenue Footbridge and more.

Gage said it’s impossible in city government to please every person. “We get a lot of input,” he said. “We have to try to figure out how to synthesize all that and get an idea of what we think the general public would like to see.”