WASHINGTON – Joe Gaa’s journey to Washington was long and circuitous.

The Washington city manager, who started his job last week, has led several communities since 2010, starting in Woodbine, a western Iowa town of fewer than 1,500 residents. He then moved to Chariton before moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, but said he didn’t feel comfortable there and eventually moved to Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Although he enjoyed the position and called it “the best job I’ve ever had,” Gaa said he always hoped to return to Iowa. He eventually did, coming to Marshalltown last year, but said he was unhappy with the leadership there and ultimately quit before his six-month contract was up.

While it’s by no means a traditional career path, Gaa said he would like to settle down in a small town in Iowa, and the atmosphere in Washington “just felt right” when he first visited the city in July.

“I arrived on a Thursday afternoon, so they were just getting ready for the farmers market,” he said. “But during the process, as I met with the staff, the community members and the council, everyone here was really proud of their community, and I felt like that was probably the main thing I was looking for.”

The city administrator’s career did not begin with municipal work, however. He graduated with a master’s degree in park and recreation management and initially wanted to pursue a doctorate and become a teacher until he realized that this was not his strong suit either.

“You think about recreational activities and theme parks,” he said. “Once you get to the PhD level, it’s all about the boring stuff, it’s about research… that’s probably why I didn’t finish my PhD, because I hated that stuff. I didn’t want to know that stuff, I wanted to do the fun stuff.”

Gaa spent several years as parks director for Sebastian County, Arkansas, population 125,000, before moving to Woodbine. He found that administrative work was a better fit for him and drew on his own motivations for broader community improvement.

“What we do here impacts people’s lives,” he said. “People use water and wastewater services every day and expect the water to run when they turn on the tap … knowing that people expect us to do our job right is, I think, what drives me.”

In this context, he believes that the water issue is at the heart of Gaas’ greatest personal achievement.

In Aberdeen, he helped coordinate the construction of a massive water pipeline from the Missouri River that is shared by the city and two rural water districts, which now also are responsible for the pipeline and a wastewater treatment plant to serve the communities. Gaa said the two entities had tried to work together before and failed, but were forced to work together to get state funding.

“We all had our priorities, but sometimes you had to leave some of them at the door,” he said. “At different times, the three of us took turns to see who was going to keep us on track that day.”

While it’s easy to focus on the big wins, Gaa said working at the municipal level appeals to him because of the change from one moment to the next and the challenge of balancing such a wide range of priorities. He said the position requires agile thinking and a willingness to change course on a dime.

“Someone walks in the door and says, ‘The day I’m going to close out a $15 million home, they might have a really simple problem like … a property next to them isn’t being well maintained,'” Gaa said. “That’s really important to them, so you have to make it really important to them … that’s tough sometimes because you go from working on something really difficult to something that’s more mundane to me because I’ve done this 100 times in my career, but these people are dealing with it for the first time.”

Outside of the office, Gaa has a handful of hobbies. He is an avid Kansas City Chiefs fan and has a small garden gnome with the team’s logo in his office, next to another from Northwest Missouri State, his alma mater.

He also describes himself as a hobbyist, nature lover and wood pellet smoker enthusiast. But he said he rarely stopped to think about his job, even in his free time.

“I don’t think I can ever turn it off,” he said. “I wake up in the middle of the night and just think about we’re going to do it… I don’t think that’s a bad thing. This is a really important job and to me it’s just who I am and what I do.”

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