Lisa Bode was named governmental affairs director 6 years ago, after nearly 30 years working in community development. (Photo/Nancy Hanson.)

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

Most of Moorhead’s administrative staffers concentrate on what’s going on within the city. Lisa Bode’s role is a little different: She keeps an eye on what’s happening elsewhere.
Starting Tuesday, Moorhead’s governmental affairs director will be laser-focused on St. Paul. Minnesota’s 94th legislative session convenes at noon at the Capitol. The city council has endorsed an agenda of priorities that includes both funding for civic projects, like completion at last of the 2010 flood mitigation plan and measures to aid downtown redevelopment, and support of other entities’ proposals, among them Clay County’s regional psychiatric treatment center for juveniles.
“The Governmental Affairs function is really about working with others outside the city – the state and federal government and external partners,” Lisa explains. “Our legislature is obviously high on that list.”
When the gavel falls in St. Paul Tuesday, it will mark the beginning of Lisa’s sixth season as Moorhead’s liaison with the doings at the Capitol. She was named to the then-new governmental watchdog post after a City Hall reorganization in 2019. But after nearly 30 years as a member of the Community Development staff, she was anything but a newbie.
“I’ve basically spent my entire professional career with the city of Moorhead,” the Roseau, Minnesota, native explains. She joined the city shortly after earning her first degree at Minnesota State University Moorhead in 1988. It was something of a fluke: “I’d applied to be an office specialist in the Fire Department, but they never interviewed me,” she confides, adding, “I tell people I was a Fire Department reject. But afterwards, they turned their applications over to Community Development for a different job posting. That’s when I got a call.
“I didn’t really know what ‘community development’ meant, but it sounded relevant and meaningful. I thought I’d never be bored,” she says.
Lisa spent the next decades confirming that first impression. Starting as an office specialists, she worked her way through a variety of roles, from community development specialist and planner to neighborhood services manager and finally, after Scott Hutchins’ retirement, interim co-director with Kristie Leshovsky.” When the department’s functions were reorganized in 2019, she became the first to be named governmental affairs director.
So what, after all, does “community development” mean?
“It means that every neighborhood deserves to have what it needs to succeed,” she suggests, “and that people don’t have to live someplace just because it’s housing of last resort. Every neighborhood has assets. We want a reliable transportation network. We want decent, safe and sanitary housing. We want amenities and fun activities to do in all our neighborhoods. We want every neighborhood to be a neighborhood of choice, with its own range of assets.
“So, really, the work that I’m doing now in governmental affairs provides the building blocks that enable our other departments to provide that for all our neighbors.”
Research and policy analysis, two key elements of her present assignment, have always been a big part of Lisa’s job. She was part of the team that approached St. Paul during legislative season. Though she rarely made the trip herself, she remembers her first testimony to the Legislature about the Make Moorhead Home property tax rebate program.
By 2018, she was working with the city council on developing its legislative agenda, a role she continued after governmental affairs became a separate department.
Since then, preparing for the state’s deliberations have accounted for the largest share of her time. The past five sessions have included significant support for her city’s needs: Funding for the underpasses, perpetual progress on the flood mitigation plan, permission to enact the sales tax that’s funding the community center and library, and strengthening the Border City Enterprise Zone and Disparity Reduction Credit programs, both essential to attract and sustain businesses on the east side of the Red River.
“We work with the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities and the League of Minnesota Cities (two separate groups) on issues that broadly affect communities statewide,” she explains. (Mayor Shelly Carlson is president of the former group, and Lisa has served as its treasurer for many years.) “Our own team’s efforts focus strategically on border issues and measures specific to Moorhead.” Two Twin Cities lobbying groups assist with those efforts.
Lisa credits the District 4 legislative delegation with key support for Moorhead, including former Reps. Paul Marquardt and Ben Lien and Sen. Kent Eken, along with current Sen. Rob Kupec and Reps. Heather Keeler and Jim Joy. She also has praise for the Fargo Moorhead West Fargo Chamber of Commerce, which has organized Moorhead Area Day at the Legislature, bringing city officials and business leaders together to make the city’s case. (The next is coming up March 4 and 5.)
Lisa describes her – and the city’s – approach as being prepared to “launch ships into every wave we see. If the opportunity arises, we want to have a position on it and be ready to go. It’s teamwork. I have a role in the preparations. Then our people take it from there.”