Chris Kukulski looks back on Billings as he departs for a town a hundredth the size

In his final days as Billings’ city administrator, Chris Kukulski was given a battle helmet.

Former Mayor Bill Cole handed the army green helmet to Kukulski on Thursday. It was inscribed with signatures from colleagues and friends Kukulski had worked with and made from his time in Montana. 

“You fought plenty of battles, and you didn't duck the tough ones,” Cole said at a farewell party filled with family, friends and colleagues at the Billings Public Library. “You put your head up out of the foxhole. Sometimes it was shot off, but often it wasn't. And often you would get up and lead the charge out of the foxhole yourself.”

Cole helped vote in Kukulski to lead the city eight years ago after a tumultuous search process that had to be done twice over. Cole joked that he would like to get the administrator a golden watch, but Kukulski likely knew there wouldn’t be room in the budget for it.

Kukulski’s final day was Friday, May 29. During his time in Billings he served as the level-headed, calm adviser facing a council who might vote against his staff’s recommendations and a public often wanting a face to be angry at.

In early June, he will return to the state where he and his wife were born and raised and take up the position of city manager in Harbor Springs, Michigan. 

“We have loved Montana,” Kukulski, 56, told the Gazette. “We've had just the greatest experience in Billings and in Montana, but it's time to get closer to family.”

With the transition Kukulski takes a pay cut from a $219,000 salary to the Michigan city’s uppermost limit of $150,000. He will move to a municipality about a hundredth of the population of Billings at 1,274 in 2020 and work with a city council wanting to maintain its small town charm alongside Lake Michigan, a contrast to Billings' steady growth.

When interviewed by the Gazette, Kukulski had just reviewed Billings’ public works budget with the City Council. That $204.8 million plan alone easily eclipsed Harbor Spring’s entire budget nearly 40 times over. 

Michigan

Having first managed Jonesville, Michigan, in the 90s (population 2,334 in 2000), this will be a drastic change for Kukulski who has led larger and larger cities in his career. Still, he always knew he would return to his home state of Michigan at some point after coming to Montana, expecting initially to only stay for three to five years. He grew up in places like North Branch, north of Detroit, a similarly small Michigan town similar to Harbor Spring. He first met his wife Nicole in the fourth grade there. 

In an interview with Harbor Springs council in March, Kukulski recounted how he came to his work ethic that’s often involved late night council meetings. He grew up with his dad working on the General Motors factory line in Flint, Michigan. Kukulski's mom stayed home, and when his his dad was laid off, the patriarch had to pick up whatever work there was.

“He'd rake leaves, clean windows, do whatever he needed to do to get by until we got through that next set, and that just taught me a really strong work ethic,” Kukulski told council in his introduction.

Consequently, Kukulski, the oldest brother of five siblings, said he started working before he was 16. 

And as he paid his own way through college in Michigan, he remained interested in politics. Then he had a conversation with the longest-serving Representative in U.S. history, John Dingell from Detroit, who served from 1955 until 2015. 

“He basically said if you want a family, if you want a normal life, national politics are not going to afford you the kind of family stability that you want," Kukulski told the Gazette. "It appeared to me that's not what I wanted. I knew nothing about city management. I'd never known anything about the career, but then I learned about this form of government and hiring a professional based on skills and abilities and education to run the operation, and work for a policy body. I've been doing it since I was 26. I've gotten to serve four communities, and Lord willing, we'll finish my career at the fifth.”

Montana 

Kukulski first set foot in Montana on his honeymoon to Glacier National Park in 1994. He couldn't resist the pull of the state and came back in 1999 where he became city manager of Kalispell. Then he moved to Bozeman to lead the city for 13 years before ultimately coming to Billings.

“We always wanted to live in beautiful places,” Kukulski said. “I wanted to work in places where people want to be, that are growing, that are thriving. From a career perspective, it's been a real blessing.” 

Chuck Winn, Bozeman’s current city manager, was first promoted to fire chief then to assistant city manager under Kukulski’s watch in Bozeman. He said Kukulski is an “incredibly kind and generous person” who was one of his favorite bosses he ever had.

“Chris gave more people opportunities to excel in leadership in Montana municipalities," Winn said. "Not only was he a leader here at Billings, he was a leader with all Montana city managers, and Montana is a better place because of him.” 

Winn gave Kukulski the first ever lifetime achievement award from the Montana City County Management Association at the farewell party Thursday.

“Your fingerprints are all over what is great about this state, and we just want to thank you,” Winn said. 

Kukulski left his position leading Bozeman feeling pressured. In 2018, he told the Gazette that it, "got to the point after 13 years where they wanted a new leader."

Still, he said it was “about double the life expectancy of a city manager."

After trying out a new leadership position in the private sector, he started looking elsewhere in less than a year. Elsewhere turned out to be Billings. He was unanimously voted to lead staff by Billings City Council after a yearlong search in spite of that administrative gap. 

Within his first six months, Kukulski got a glowing performance review with 9 out of 11 council members voting to give him a raise as they found him responsive, dedicated and committed. Still, that same year council went against Kukulski’s own advice. In an attempt to bring property tax cuts, the council tapped into reserves for general operation expenses. It was a 6-5 vote. Votes on spending in recent months have often diverged from initial staff recommendations, typically coming from how money should be spent or what projects should be prioritized.

A past raise to his current $219,000 salary also barely squeaked by last spring on a 6-5 vote as council members questioned spending priorities and delayed the raise amid a public works audit. Every other year he’s received high marks from the council.

“There's 11 strong opinions on the City Council, and they've got different ideas about how they want to do things, but you're always super appreciative of the group of people who offered you a job,” he told the Gazette.  

It was around the time of the salary raise that Kukulski started looking for positions in Michigan, though he said the two weren’t related. His children had all left Billings for other states leaving him and his wife the only family left in Montana.

Billings 

One of the things Kukulski remains grateful for is his family putting up with his work that often featured him prominently in headlines and in other media.

In his final years in Billings, the quiet public official, along with the rest of the city, was besieged by complaints about allegedly inflated water bills charged to customers. In spite of an third-party audit that didn’t find overcharging, the situation has seemingly only escalated. A recent class action complaint saw more residents added who alleged harm by the City of Billings following water shut offs that began this year on delinquent customers. The city has moved to toss the lawsuit.

Online, Billings residents are seemingly still bitter about the charges made in the summer of 2024 that turned Kukulski into more of a public figurehead than is typical for a city administrator. When news outlet KTVQ broke the news that Kukulski was offered the job in Harbor Springs in March, the top Facebook comment gathering 70 likes and love reactions was, “Best news for Billings in a long time. Good riddance Chris. Best of luck Michigan.” 

The second highest comment said, “Makes sense to leave before the lawsuit against public works holds anyone accountable for stealing money from the taxpayer” to 44 likes. The story itself garnered less than 200 reactions. 

While Kukulski can’t speak directly to the lawsuit, he conceded “there are some people who just really believe that the city was not being honest with them.”

Still, he said that the timing of new billing software for water couldn’t have been worse. It came just as customers received bills for multiple months, a rate increase and a dry summer. 

“If you live in the high desert in the summer, guess what, you do a lot of watering,” Kukulski said of the incident early on during his Harbor Springs council interview. “So, we learned a number of things, not the least of which was even though the project was months behind, we still should have stopped them and said you cannot even try to implement this in June, you're going to wait until the fall.”

Like Cole, who wrapped up eight years as mayor this January, Kukulski also expressed regret about the unsuccessful $143 million parks bond that failed more than 2 to 1 by voters in 2023. With the loss of a parks district under his time as mayor, he said Billings took a “step backward” with its investment in the parks.

“The failed parks, rec, and trail bond was a real setback,” Kukulski said. “In hindsight, we would do that differently and would have chosen smaller projects. I think Billings likes to build momentum. To use a baseball analogy, you don't step up to the plate and just swing for a grand slam. Just let's get some base hits, some doubles, and keep improving.”

Still, he oversaw a consolidation of all city offices to one place with one city hall using COVID-19 funds. He also pushed forward two successful public safety levies in 2020 and 2021, both coming after a past public safety levy failed in 2017 before he started. Public safety was one of his and council’s immediate goals, with the violent crime rate in Billings having decreased since the pandemic. 

“There was a motivated public, and we made a commitment that we would meet with anybody anywhere at any time to educate them on the issues and let them know what the impact of a yes vote or a no vote would be on resources,” Kukulski said. “Both of them passed by an over 60% margin. A lot of people really were skeptical that we could do two of those back to back, but I think the City Council at the time, the staff, the collaboration, the community stepping up and helping were huge.”

Onwards

With Kukulski’s departure, Assistant City Administrator Kevin Iffland takes over as interim city administrator. He came on as an assistant administrator months before Kukulski came to Billings. Iffland said Kukulski has been a good person leading Billings in the past several years, and he's ready to “keep the city moving forward.”

At the farewell party, Deputy Mayor Mike Boyett chided Kukulski that while he often has missed him at his desk in City Hall, he knows that the former city administrator was the only person that council members could call at 3 a.m. and receive an answer. 

"That's worth a million dollars to me,” Boyett told the audience, presenting him with a plaque of his own. Also included at the party was a map of Billings city limits, bordered by send-offs from people Kukulski has worked with. 

Mayor Mike Nelson was mentored by Kukulski in his first nearly six months on council, with the administrator leaving mid-budget cycle. 

“Now you're going to Michigan,” Nelson told the crowd gathered in the library that included Kukulski’s wife and one of his daughters. “Yeah, you're gonna be happy, you're gonna be around your family, and you're going to miss every minute that you suffered in Billings, Montana, because you did a darn fine job.”

Kukulski credited the people he worked with for helping him pull off some of Billings’ recent accomplishments, saying he wouldn’t have been able to do it without his staff. 

He reminisced at the party about when he first applied to Billings thinking they wouldn’t take the risk on him from Bozeman, after he just had to leave his past administrative position. But then they took the chance.

“I'm forever indebted to this community for taking that to this,” he said. “So, thank you all so much, and please enjoy some cake, and enjoy some time together.”

On the two chocolate and vanilla cakes at his party was a quote: “After satisfying myself sufficiently in this delightful prospect of the extensive country . . . I descended and proceeded on. - William Clark 1806 - Chris Kukulski 2026.”