Dan Toland, Mayor

Since Abraham D. Andrews became River Falls’ first mayor in 1885, 34 different people have served as mayor in the City's history. None has served longer than the current mayor, Dan Toland. After assuming the role in April of 2012, Mayor Toland has now served the city for 13 years — surpassing the run of Maynard E. Hoffman in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Despite growing up in River Falls, Mayor Toland never dreamed of becoming mayor of his hometown. It wasn't until someone suggested his wife run for mayor that he ever considered the possibility. On this episode of the Kinni Cast, Mayor Toland reminisces about his first election, talks about how he balances a full-time job with his duties as mayor, and of course sneaks in some opinions about his beloved Green Bay Packers.

Learn more about the City of River Falls at www.rfcity.org. Follow the City of River Falls on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Transcript

Intro

Since Abraham D Andrews became River falls first mayor in 1885, 34 different people have served as mayor in the city's history. None has served longer than the current mayor, Dan Toland. After assuming the role in April of 2012, Mayor Tolan has now served the city for 13 years, surpassing the run of Maynard E Hoffman in the 1950s and 60s. Despite growing up in River falls, Mayor Tolan never dreamed of becoming the mayor. One day. It wasn't until someone suggested his wife run for mayor that he ever considered the possibility. On this episode of The Kinney Cast, Mayor Tolan recalls his first election. Talks about how he balances a full time job in addition to serving as mayor, and of course, sneaks in some opinions about his beloved green Bay Packers. That's all right. Now on a brand new episode of the Kinney cast.

Tyler Mason

Welcome back to another episode of the Kinni Cast. Today on the podcast, we have maybe the biggest Packers fan in River Falls. He can argue whether he is or not. He also happens to be the mayor. I'm with Dan Toland. Mayor, how are you doing today? 

Mayor Toland

I'm doing good. How are you doing, Tyler? 

Tyler Mason

I'm good. Do you think you are the biggest Packer fan in town?

Mayor Toland

There's a lot of big Packer fans in town. I like to support them. I've been doing it for as long as I can remember. 

Tyler Mason

Sure, sure. Well, we'll maybe get into some Packer banter at some point, but we're going to talk a little bit about you today. So I know you weren't born in River falls, but you moved here I think as a kid. Share a little bit about, you know, moving to River Falls and growing up here.

Mayor Toland

Yeah, growing up in town, I've been here now, I think, I believe 50 years, this year would be my 50th year here. I moved here when I was 15, 14, somewhere in here. Yeah. I believe it's around 50 years. It's pretty close. So when I was younger, I had an uncle that lived out here. So we'd come out all the time and visit him. And I used to like to come out and putz around a little hobby farm. So I used to like to come out there. So when mom and dad said they're going to move out here, I was like, yeah, that's a phenomenal idea. So I was real happy, you know? And when we moved out here, I like the feeling of it was very secure. Small, secure town. And it didn't take you long to get to know all the people, you know. I mean, I don't remember what the population was back then, but it was smaller back then. I'm guessing it was 7,000, maybe 8,000. I need to be honest with you. I never paid attention to it. I was born on the east side of Saint Paul. So I moved from Oakdale in that area over there. Coming over here was such a huge difference in, you know, the amount of people and traffic and everything. I said, I just love this. The whole feeling of the small town and everything. So that that's what I really remember about moving over here is I had no issues with it. I wasn't worried about it. It was nice. I enjoyed it. 

Tyler Mason

Now a lot of kids maybe don't think about staying in their home town forever, the town they grow up in. I know my wife is from Hudson and never wanted to move back to Hudson, but we did. Was staying in River Falls as an adult, was that something you ever thought of? And did you ever dream of becoming mayor? My guess my to that second one is probably no. 

Mayor Toland

No, no, no, I never dreamed. No, no, no, I never thought I'd be in any kind of elected position of anything. Never even occurred to me. But growing up here and back then, you gotta remember, I graduated high school 45 years ago. So back then it was, you know, you go to high school, you'd get a girlfriend, maybe one of you would go to college, maybe. And it was just kind of a natural progression of you get out of high school, you get married, you'd have kids. It never occurred to me to move anywhere else because everything was here. I worked here in town. My job was here. We lived here. We lived here for a long time. Started having kids. Her family was here. Part of my family was here. It never occurred to me, probably as I got older. Now, you know, over the last 15 years, I've brought it up a few times to Joni about, 'Do you ever think maybe we might want to move somewhere different?' She's like, 'Eh.' And then you get to the point where now we've got so many grandkids, it's like she can't she can't leave that. So I'm guessing this will be the spot forever. 

Tyler Mason

So it was 2012 that you became mayor? I guess leading up to that, what drove you to run for mayor? You said it was something you never really thought of, but I guess take me back to that time and kind of what that whole process was like. 

Mayor Toland

I never thought of it. I came home from work one day, and a friend of the family used to be a Saint Croix County commissioner. And he was in the shop one day, and he was bugging Joni, teasing her really about running for mayor of River Falls because Joni can get kind of opinionated sometimes and all that. And he goes, 'Oh you should run for mayor of River Falls.' And it was went Don Richards was mayor. He comes up and says, 'You'd be a great mayor. You do a great job.' And Joni said, 'No, I ain't got time." We just laughed about it. It was kind of funny. And so the next day I'm thinking, that'd be kind of interesting. I wonder what I wonder what it takes to, you know, and to be perfectly honest with you before then, I never paid any attention to City Hall. I never paid attention to -- I couldn't tell you who are elected officials were at the time.

Tyler Mason

Which I think is not uncommon for a lot of people

Mayor Toland

Yeah, which I think is pretty common. You know, you're busy with we owned the business and had kids. And I started looking into it a little bit. I thought, hey, that might be interesting. So I just kind of went from there. 

Tyler Mason

When you did win, I understand the race was pretty close. What do you recall about that process? And I think there was a recount to that, is that right? 

Mayor Toland

Yeah. The whole race was such a weird time. It was such a weird thing. I remember when I decided I wanted to run for mayor, I came in and Lu Ann Hecht was the clerk at the time. And I came in and talked to Lu Ann. I said, 'Hey, what do I have to do to run to be mayor?' And she said, she kind of looked at me funny. She was, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'I want run for mayor. What do I have to do?' And she explained it all to me and there wasn't a lot involved. And she goes, 'Well, you sure you don't want to start on some kind of board or something to kind of figure out what's going on?' 'Nah. I'm going to start at the top and work our way down. So then the night of the election, she called me up. We're at the shop and we've got a bunch of friends over there and we're all, you know, kind of anxious. She calls me up and it's like, 'Oh, really nervous, really nervous.' And she goes, 'Dan, you won.' I go, 'Wow.' I was just like, 'Are you kidding me?' To be honest with you, I had never once thought I would win. I mean, Don had been mayor for quite a while, and everybody kept telling me that, oh, it's hard to beat the incumbent, you know, nobody knows you. And I said, 'Well, that's a good thing maybe. Nobody knows me.' And she told me I won, but then she told me I only won by so many votes. It was only like, I think it was like 9 or 10. And she said, 'Well, he wants to do a recount.' So they did a recount and then there was something else after that. I want to say it was at least 3 or 4 weeks before she could officially tell me that I was the official mayor, and by then I'm like, 'Lu Ann, you kind of sucked all the fun out of it for me.' But it was it was really exciting and very intimidating at the time because it's like, 'Oh my goodness, what did I get myself into now?' So right away I started reading up on what it's like to be a mayor. And of course, everything I read had nothing to do with a small town like River Falls and the way we run. But then I came in, had my first couple meetings with Scot. Scot Simpson was the city administrator. He put my mind at ease. We talked about, you know, I had a million questions and we talked about all different things. Anyways, it was it was a very exciting time. It was fun. 

Tyler Mason

Well, you were explaining that there was a big learning curve kind of figuring things out. But as far as the role itself of mayor goes for the City of River Falls, how do you view your role or that role of mayor as it kind of fits into the big picture?

Mayor Toland
I think my biggest role as mayor in the City of Falls is to make sure I make it as safe as I can for everybody, make sure we're providing them with the best city services, whether that's police, fire, ambulance. We want all great utilities, and infrastructure is a big deal. You know, we've got to make sure we have great infrastructure. Otherwise everything just crumbles. You know, if we don't have good infrastructure, we don't have good roads. We don't have any of that making sure everybody's safe as they possibly can. I think that's my very first responsibility, I guess you would say as mayor. And then, you know, I work close to Scot, I work with all the department heads. It's more of a case of where I look at I look at like a 10,000-foot picture. I talk with Scott about things we want to accomplish, kind of a liaison between me and the council. And the council meets with him, too. But I meet with Scot to make sure we're on the same page as to, 'Okay, we talked about this. You want to get this done, I want to do this.' Or, 'The council wants to do this. What are we doing to make sure we get that done?' And Scot kind of carries out. He's like my general on the field. He kind of carries out my orders, the council's orders. So going back to your original question, I think my biggest thing is as mayor is to make sure everybody feels as safe as possible. And, you know, make sure this the city's as accepting to everybody as it is. 

Tyler Mason

And some people probably realize, and maybe not everybody does, that mayor of River Falls, that's not your full time job. And in fact, very few cities in Wisconsin or probably even in the country, you know, maybe Milwaukee or Madison, they're full time mayors or that's all they do. But you have another job outside of this. Maybe share a little bit about when you're not at City Hall, when you're not serving as mayor what are you doing? 

Mayor Toland

Yeah. So if I'm not doing the mayor thing, so my me and my wife, Joni, we own Pearson Florist in town. So we do that. But I'm kind of basically the head custodian. I do mostly repairs and make sure the buildings are standing and I bring all the bouquets. And then I'm a part-time delivery guy. So  Joni does all the hard work, I get to do all the glory stuff. I get to bring all her beautiful finished product to the customers on the weekends. And then my full time job is I'm a manufacturing engineer technician for Phillips Medisize up in Hudson. So that's what I do eight hours a day during the day. So and then and then when I'm not doing either one of those, I'm doing City Hall stuff.

Tyler Mason

When you first became mayor back in 2012, what surprised you the most, just maybe in general about that role or about, you know, what it is to be a mayor? 

Mayor Toland

The first surprising thing was how much was, I wasn't expecting the amount of things you have to know or that you should at least understand what's going on. And to this day, I still learn new stuff all the time. But the first two years went by in a flash because they're so overwhelming. There's so much to learn, so much to do, so much to practice and try to understand. I thought when I ran for mayor and I became mayor, I thought, small town, it's going to be so easy. We're going to get so much stuff done. It's just going to be bang, bang, bang, and we'll get everything done wee want to do. Well, I kind of forgot, I didn't take into account the fact that we're part of two counties, right? Part of the state, part of the federal government. And we were surrounded by four townships and a couple little ones. So you have to work with all that. So nothing goes nearly as fast as you think it would in a small town. So it took a while to get used to that. I found that kind of disappointing. 'Oh, this is going to be so great. We're going to get so much stuff done.' Which we have -- we've done a ton of stuff and we still do, but it's never quite as fast as you want it to be.

Tyler Mason

From those early days or early couple years, you obviously enjoyed it. You ran for reelection and have continued to do so. What did you enjoy most about those first couple of years? 

Mayor Toland

It was it was nice to -- and I and I talk about council members and I talk to board members -- for me, it was really eye-opening to find out and learn why the city does things the way they do them.  Something basic like why do we plow streets the way we plow them? Why do we do this? Why do we do that? And what's the reason behind we do it that way and not this way? So it was kind of neat to be able to look behind the curtain a little bit. And that's why I encourage people all the time to get on boards. Just come let me know if you want to be on a board and when one opens, we can get you on boards as soon as we can, because it is a good way for people to understand and learn to look behind the curtain, see how things operate and why we do things that way. You know, especially if you don't agree with the way we do things. It's good to learn that, you know. So I thought that was that was exciting. I found it very satisfying to be able to help a citizen come in that gets a hold of me, or they would come in and they would be upset about something, or they just couldn't understand why we did something the way we did. And 98% of the time, they can come in and you can sit down and talk to them and explain the city's reasoning of why we do things the way we do, or why we made the decision we made. And then they understand it. 'Okay, I guess now I understand.' And you can kind of watch it wash over their faces like, 'Oh, of course, that makes sense now.' So I still find that very rewarding when I can do that. 

Tyler Mason

Well, I think, I saw one of -- maybe it was a Pierce County Journal article. You were asked about being the longest serving mayor in the history of River Falls, which you are now. And it sounds like that maybe is not something you think about, but have you reflected on that at all and what that means? 

Mayor Toland

No, never. Every time somebody says it, it's like, big deal. So I look at it like, what does that mean? It means I'm having fun doing it. I will say that I enjoy doing it. I love the direction the city is going. We keep doing great things and I want to see those things through. That's one of the reasons I run. Or else you can look at it like either that, or I'm just an idiot because nobody else wants to run and I just keep doing it. But I choose to believe that it's because I really enjoy it and I have fun doing it. 

Tyler Mason

Well, you mentioned some of the accomplishments and things that have happened since you became mayor in 2012. When you think about all the stuff that's happened during your tenure, what are you most proud of? 

Mayor Toland

What am I most proud of? I think what I'm most proud of is the fact that when it comes to any kind of decisions or things we're looking at, we don't do knee jerk reactions. Every decision we're looking at, I want to make sure we're looking down the road. How is this going to affect us? And when I say me, I mean staff and the city council. Staff and city council, they do a phenomenal job of making sure what we're doing is going to work 15 years from now, 20 years from now. What is this going to do? So we've made these other decisions. Is this going to affect the other decisions? So I work with such capable staff that they make me look like a genius. Let's not get a complicated: I am not a genius. Staff is phenomenal here at City Hall. Everything they do, it's easy to stand here and they give me, you know, they take a quote from me in the newspaper and I sound like a genius. Well, no, I'm not. I'm smart enough to say yes to a lot of things because staff does great things and they make me look really good. They make the council look really good as far as things. So I'm proud of that. I'm proud of the fact that we've continued to have consistent growth, that there again, we're not getting so far ahead of ourselves that we're going to get in trouble with infrastructure and stuff like that down the road. We're always looking at every development we do, no matter what it is, we look at, okay, how much is development going to cost us? Can we afford it? Do we have to? Is this going to require more staff? Is it going to require more police? Does it require more ambulance? So we look at all that. So when it comes to taxes it's like, we don't get too far or our skis and stuff like that. We're always looking at stuff like that. So we're always looking down the road, and I'm really proud of that. I think we keep doing a great job on that. And it's little things like that the public doesn't know anything, they don't they don't recognize the stuff that we do like that stuff that because it's not it's not sexy stuff. It's not, 'Oh look, they put up a big building.' You know, it's not the sexy stuff. I'm more proud of all the little things that people don't know we do that goes on behind the scenes that make this a great city to live in. I mean, just there's so much small minutiae stuff that people don't pay attention to, and that's what really matters when it comes to a city like this is all that little fine stuff. That's what I'm proud of, that we keep we keep doing stuff like that. And the fact that our steady growth over the years is another testament that I'm proud of, the fact that people want to live here, people want to move here, people want to live here. They want to be part of what's going on in River Falls. They want to raise their families. They want to work here. They want to do whatever they can to be part of the community. So I'm very proud of the staff for everything they do for making that happen. So I think it's fantastic.

Tyler Mason
Mayor, you mentioned a little bit earlier about, you know, hearing from residents and people in town. They can come in and see you, but you've done other things, whether it's Cookout Conversations that people can come and see you. Every couple of years we've had the National Community Survey. What do you appreciate most just about the chance to hear from residents?

Mayor Toland
Well, I appreciate the fact that some of them will actually reach out to me. I appreciate the fact that they want to know what the truth is. They want to know what's going on. That that makes me happy, that people want to know that I appreciate it when they come and they talk to me and we can come to an understanding or we can say, well, this is why we do things. And they may not agree with it, but at least they understand why we do it that way. If you really think something's wrong, you really think you're upset about something, or you really want to complain about something, I have a direct phone number. You can call me. I may not always -- I won't get to it because it rings in my office here at City Hall. But I'll get the voicemail. I have an email. Email me, set up a meeting. Come and talk to me. We got seven council members. Come talk to your Council members. We have staff online all the time. You can talk to staff. All you can do is reach out. And what I love is 99% of the people in town do that. That's what they should do. That's what we're here for. That's our number one job as mayor, Council members, staff is to help our citizens with whatever they need help with here. 

Tyler Mason

Well, a couple left here for you. I'm curious about this. So since I started here a little over a year ago, I put you on camera plenty. You dressed up as Doc Brown for our State of the City video, I made a jump in the pool, dressed you up as Uncle Sam. You can be honest. Have you enjoyed doing those sorts of things as another way to kind of connect or maybe share what we're doing?

Mayor Toland
So  we first started talking about stuff like this, I thought it was a phenomenal idea. I think this is something we've been lacking for years and years and years. And when you came along with all these ideas and we've talked about them and figured them out, I think it's fantastic. I absolutely love doing it. I think nowadays it's how you reach your people, right? I mean, we can go on and on and talk about community engagement and nobody comes to council meetings unless they want to, you know, unless they've got a complaint about something, which is what we're there for. But even that, you know, they all they can do is come and talk it, you know, they can talk for a couple minutes. I like the fact that they don't have to go to our website and know what's going on and kind of drudge through all that. I like the fact that we can do the social media stuff. People love watching this stuff. You know, we've become such a visual society now that it's great to be able to be part of that. It's great to be able to look at this great thing that's coming up, or look at these great things we're doing. And here, let's have some fun. I think you get more people engaged that way. I assume people like it. I haven't heard anybody complain too much about it, you know, so I enjoy it. It's fun to do. And you've been great getting the stuff going and you have a great job doing it. 

Tyler Mason

It's been fun for me and you haven't said no to any ideas. 

Mayor Toland

No I know. Well, that might come, but so far it's been fantastic. 

Tyler Mason

Well, before I get to the last question that I'll ask everyone on this podcast, I'll open the floor for a minute of Packer banter if you want to predict the season here since training camp is underway.

Mayor Toland
Well, as a true Packer fan, they're going to the Super Bowl. They're a dynasty born again. There's nothing on that team lacking except maybe a quarterback. I'm not sold on Love yet. We'll see how he does this year. But otherwise, we're pretty solid. People can say what they want. It's who we are. But, you know, and all that is Viking fans. They've all settled for mediocrity. So God forbid anybody should do good and they can't stand it. That's a shout out to you Viking fans. 

Tyler Mason

What percentage do you think in town is Vikings versus Packers fans? 

Mayor Toland

Oh, I bet it's gotta be pretty close to 50-50. I mean it's probably 60 Packers, 40 Vikings. But there's a lot more Viking fans because we can't stop them at the border. They just keep coming over here. Even if we try. But they just keep coming over here so they know because they know a good thing when they see it. They won't support a good football team, but they'll come support a great city. 

Tyler Mason

There you go. I'm not a Packer fan so I'll abstain from any comments on it. 

Mayor Toland

Well, it's all fun. This is all fun. Everywhere I've ever worked, there's always been the rivalry between the Packers and the Vikings. It's just fun. Especially when they're so bad all the time. 

Tyler Mason

Well, the last one for you and this is like I said, I asked Scot on the first episode. This will be kind of the theme throughout, but when you think about the impact that your work has had or will have on the people of River Falls, what impact do you hope it will have had?

Mayor Toland
I don't know if my impact will be that great. I think my impact is the fact that most people don't even know who I am, and I think that's a great thing. I think that means we're not doing wrong things. We're not in trouble. We're not doing stupid things. I don't have -- I'm not in front of people apologizing for stuff all the time. I enjoy the fact that I can go around town, even some of the people I meet have no idea who I am. I think that's a great impact for a mayor to have. I mean, now, unless you're the mayor of some big city where you're always dealing with stuff, that's a different story. But I think my impact is the fact that people are just happy to live here, and I hope that has something to do with the decisions I've made and the decisions I've been part of, with the council and staff and, you know, trying to get projects going on that. But if I'm not remembered, that's okay. I got no problem with that. And I hate to keep harping on staff, but it's staff. They're the ones that do everything. Me and Council says we want to do this and do that, that's easy to sit in your chair and say we want to do this, we want to do that, make the right decisions. If you don't have good staff to carry that out -- so maybe if I'm remembered for anything, it's that, for making sure we have great staff that does what needs to be done to make this a great community to live in. And that's very important to me that we have staff that does that. And I think that'd be a great thing to be remembered for. 'I don't remember who the mayor was, but boy, he had great staff. They did great things. The city did great things when he was mayor.' So that'll be perfect. 

Tyler Mason

Well, with that, you're off the hook in your first ever podcast interview. Mayor, I appreciate the time and for sharing more about your background and everything that you've done over the years. 

Mayor Toland

And hopefully, everybody made it to the end of this.

Tyler Mason
Yeah, I think I think they. 

Mayor Toland

I appreciate you giving me the opportunity. I know it's mostly about me, which maybe next time we can talk about the City more, things going on or whatever. Heck, we can get a Viking fan with me and we get a Viking Packer --

Tyler Mason

You might need your own podcast.

Mayor Toland

No, no, you can be the mediator. We can go on and on. But no, it's been a pleasure. So thanks. Thanks for having me. 

Tyler Mason

Yeah. And thanks everyone for listening to another episode of the Kinni Cast. If you haven't subscribed yet, I know it's still just been a couple episodes, but be sure to find Kinni Cast wherever you get your podcasts: on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also find it at the city of River Falls website at www.rfcity.org. And, of course we'll blast it out on all the social media channels, too. So follow us on Facebook and Instagram and you'll find it there as well. Until next time, have a great day, River Falls.