BATTLE GROUND — After a tumultuous end to her career in Longview, Kris Swanson was sworn in as Battle Ground’s city manager Monday night after serving five months as interim.
“I was thrilled when they decided to take interim out of my title and make me the permanent city manager,” Swanson said.
She hopes to focus on helping the growing city adjust to its size through development, employment, infrastructure and traffic reduction, she said.
As city manager, she oversees day-to-day operations and helps execute city council policy decisions.
Swanson said she fell in love with Battle Ground almost immediately.
“It is just a fantastic community,” she said. “The look and feel and the character of the community is still along those lines of a small town, but we are growing rapidly, and so part of my challenge as city manager is to help balance that.”
Pandemonium in Longview
Swanson kicked off her career in public service in 1991, managing the elections division in the Cowlitz County Auditor’s Office. After that, she served five terms as county auditor from 1999 to 2017.
Starting in November 2017, she worked as director of operations for the Office of the Washington State Auditor in Olympia as well as director of the Center for Government Innovation, a nonaudit division of the State Auditor’s Office that helps local governments in Washington improve operations.
Swanson returned to local government in March 2020 — right as the pandemic hit — to serve as the director of administrative services in Longview.
“I missed my sense of community, and I just felt like I had more impact serving at a local government level,” she said.
While working for the city of Longview, she faced a federal lawsuit filed against the city and Swanson in September 2022.
In the suit, two Chinese-born naturalized U.S. citizens formerly employed in the city’s Information Technology Department, managed by Swanson, alleged their terminations were unlawful and they experienced a pattern of workplace discrimination under Swanson.
The city settled the case, including no admission of liability, and paid $52,000 to each plaintiff. The Washington Cities Insurance Authority paid the plaintiffs $796,000, according to The Daily News.
Swanson said letting the employees go had nothing to do with their ethnicity, and “there was a methodical process” behind the decision, which involved a reduction in force.
She said she was appalled when she first learned of the lawsuit. “People who know me know that’s not who I am,” she said.
In November 2022, she became Longview’s first female city manager after spending some time as assistant city manager. But on March 13, the new conservative bloc of the Longview City Council fired her without cause in a 4-3 vote — unleashing controversy, chaos and multiple lawsuits claiming the council unlawfully broke her contract and held back-door meetings, according to The Daily News.
Swanson, who told OPB in March she plans to sue the city of Longview, said she decided not to go through with the suit (for which the city would have to foot the bill).
“I don’t want to have to sue a government,” she said.
Plans for Battle Ground
While the Longview situation was unfolding, Swanson received a call from Battle Ground, where former city manager Erin Erdman left to become Kennewick’s city manager. Swanson accepted an offer to become Battle Ground’s interim city manager.
Though Battle Ground has almost half the population of Longview, Swanson will receive a higher paycheck as the smaller city’s manager — $215,000 annually.
Battle Ground Mayor Troy McCoy said Swanson has been great to work with over the last few months. He said the city council chose Swanson because of her experience and detail-oriented mind set.
“Her work ethic is unmatched, but we also essentially had a working interview for a few months. She was, of the final candidates, the only one with city manager experience,” McCoy said. “The experience part is important from a small city perspective.”
Swanson said working in Battle Ground is very different from her experience in Longview, where she felt like the city was “scraping every dollar” and grappling with new council members.
“I love working with this council, who may have their disagreements, but they are not a divisive council,” she said. “They care about their community.”
Battle Ground, though long established as a community, only became a city in 1975. Its population has more than doubled since 2000, but infrastructure, employment opportunities and development have not kept up, Swanson said.
“We’re always striving to make improvements to not just attract businesses and storefronts, but even things like streetscape and improved parking,” she said.
Outside work, Swanson likes to walk around the city and explore, she said. Swanson said she used to spend most of her free time with her kids but is grappling with empty nest syndrome after her youngest son was drafted by the Detroit Tigers baseball team and her eldest son moved to San Diego to practice law.
“I didn’t have a very good work-life balance (in Longview),” Swanson said. “So after work, I’m always walking around, looking at our city, checking out our parks and the Battle Ground Lake, or just taking 503 up north as far as I can go, and exploring this area.”
