Betsy Fretwell follows a strict routine.

She rises at 5 a.m., sometimes earlier, to exercise and prepare her body for the marathon day ahead. The work starts in her car most morning as she commutes to downtown Las Vegas, taking full advantage of bluetooth technology while taking and making calls. She generally reaches her seventh-floor City Hall office by 7:30 a.m., ready to plow through the day’s meetings with council members, city planners, community business leaders and others.

It’s a nonstop agenda that doesn’t fully end when she leaves the office. At home, Fretwell spends evenings answering calls and responding to a new flood of emails.

This is the life of a Las Vegas city manager — a job Fretwell, 50, has filled for eight and a half years.

A long time? Yes. She’s the second-longest serving city manager in Las Vegas history.

A surprise? No. Those who know her well say Fretwell’s career arc seemed obvious from the start. Even Fretwell admits she had city manager ambitions from a young age.

“I probably answered that first interview question as an intern that I wanted to be a city or a county manager, and I meant it,” she said recently. “I worked really hard to try and be prepared for that and take some chances.”

But her days in local government are numbered. In early July, she’s stepping down as city manager and starting a new chapter in the private sector as an executive at local technology giant Switch.

THE EARLY YEARS

As a child in Greenville, S.C., Fretwell grew up accustomed to political discussions at the dinner table. Her grandfather served as a local city councilman. She enjoyed talking politics, but she had her heart set on going into medicine.

That changed when she took on the role of city manager during a mock government session in high school. “That was really cool because nobody had ever heard of a city manager,” she said.

Fast forward a few years. Fretwell majored in political science at the University of Georgia and then received her master’s in public administration from there as well. Against her dad’s wishes, Fretwell applied to local government jobs across the country, hoping to secure something amidst the economic downturn in 1991.

“My dad did really not want me to leave the southeast,” Fretwell said.

But Clark County, which was weathering the recession better than other cities because of its growth, came calling. So she packed up her “worldly belongings” and made the 2,000-some mile trek across the country.

And then never left.

Fretwell started as a yearlong intern with Clark County, charged with, among other things, taking care of the commission agenda. What that meant: Reading every agenda item and backup material, which gave her a glimpse into how entities such as flood control, public works and the airport operated.

“It was an incredible indoctrination to the business of government,” she said. “I became very appreciative of the attorneys and the clerk’s office because they were incredibly helpful.”

After her internship turned into a full-time job, Fretwell worked her way up through the system, eventually becoming the county’s lead lobbyist. She also had a stint as Henderson’s intergovernmental relations director before joining the city of Las Vegas in 2000 as assistant city manager.

It’s the type of career trajectory that Tina Quigley, head of the Regional Transportation Commission, expected from whom she described as her “high energy” friend. The two met as fresh-out-of-college interns, with Quigley based out of McCarran International Airport and Fretwell working from the county government building.

The close-knit interns, which included others who became community leaders, frequently ran into each other at various county meetings and spent Thursday evenings playing poolside volleyball and drinking cheap margaritas at the Rio Hotel and Casino, Quigley said.

“I knew she was going to be going someplace,” Quigley said.

Her first indication: While exercise and recreation-oriented magazines cluttered Quigley’s office, Fretwell kept hers filled with government trade publications.

“She’s just really smart and very driven,” Quigley said. “She has a good sense of governance.”

A ROUGH BEGINNING

That sense of governance was quickly tested when Fretwell became the Las Vegas city manager in early 2009.

She entered her new role at the height of the Great Recession, which battered Las Vegas more than most other cities. Foreclosures exponentially multiplied, tourism dwindled, housing values plummeted and, with fewer property taxes coming in, local governments suffered.

“We had a lot going on, but most of that first year for me was really trying to figure out what we could do to stem the tide and preserve public services,” she said.

By fiscal year 2010, the city’s expenses had outpaced revenue. As the city grappled with its lopsided budget, leaders hosted 13 town halls to discuss the critical financial situation and the unpleasant realities that would follow.

Over the course of three years, the city slashed its budget by 20 percent, cutting 617 positions in the process.

During one marathon budget meeting in March 2010, Fretwell stood at the dais for four hours as she walked the City Council through options to eliminate the deficit.

“Boy, do I feel sorry for you today, Betsy,” a union leader told her after the meeting.

Fretwell said it was the low point of her tenure as city manager — too many difficult decisions and painful staff reductions. But if there was any silver lining, it was that a leaner government emerged.

“I learned a lot and we were able to really do things differently here in the city as a result,” she said. “We started looking up long-term investments that would reduce the cost of doing business for the taxpayer.”

For instance, the city invested heavily in sustainability efforts by taking advantage of rebates and grants instead of dipping into the general fund. The city built a three-megawatt solar plant at a wastewater treatment center and installed net-metered solar covered parking and 42,000 LED street lights, among other things. The result: an annual savings of $5 million.

In January, those efforts reached a milestone: The city government is powered 100 percent by renewable energy.

The council had adopted a policy favoring the adoption of sustainable practices, a concept Fretwell said she wholly supported.

“I was passionate about it, and I thought this is a way to help us improve the bottom line, deliver a more sustainable environment for our citizens and it just seems like the right thing to do,” she said. “So we did it, and we’ve made huge headway on that.”

The city also focused on enhancing it use of technology, renewing community engagement efforts, jumpstarting downtown redevelopment and streamlining services to make it easier for people and companies to obtain things like building permits, land-use applications and business licenses. The latter may not be a headline-grabbing action, Fretwell acknowledged, but the city figured an economic downturn was a good time to improve those systems.

The vision Fretwell pioneered — with the help of other city leaders and staff — showcased her ability to see the larger picture during the region’s troubled economic period, Quigley said.

“She can cut through a lot of the distraction and noise and stay focused,” she said.

The city has recouped 265 positions that were eliminated, but the total number of full-time employees remains about 9 percent below pre-recession levels.

Last month, Fretwell delivered good news to council members: Nine years later, the city’s revenue — $536 million — has surpassed that of fiscal year 2008, when revenue began its dramatic drop and forever altered the way the city does business.

 

HER DEPARTURE

Several weeks from now, Fretwell will hand the reins of city management to her deputy, Scott Adams, and head to the private sector.

She’s accepted a job at Switch, where she’ll serve as senior vice president of Switch CITIES, a division that focuses on leveraging smart infrastructure to improve cities.

“Betsy will lead the strategic implementation of Switch’s work to accelerate Switch CITIES, the technology and design utility needed for smart cities to connect, share and analyze big data to allow cities to become intuitive and technology forward, creating the most sustainable quality of life for people of Nevada, and across the country,” Switch executive vice president Kristi Overgaard said in a statement. “We are truly excited to have Betsy join Switch and know she will continue to make a huge difference in this new role.”

The jump from the public to private sector is one that Virginia Valentine, who served as both Las Vegas city manager and then Clark County manager, knows well. She spent time in the private sector before joining local government and returned upon stepping down as county manager. Since then, she has been president of the Nevada Resort Association.

Valentine, who hired Fretwell at the city, said the timing of her successor’s job change makes sense: She’s logged many years with the government and is still young enough to create a fulfilling second career.

“It’s different,” Valentine said, referring to life in the private sector, “but I think it takes a lot of the same skills to be successful. I think she’s got a lot going for her. She has a lot of great relations. She knows the politics of not just local government. She understands the way things work.”

After 17 years with the city and an even longer career within local government, Fretwell echoed her former boss’ assessment and said it’s time to for a new challenge.

And she didn’t have to uproot from Las Vegas to find it.

“You can recreate nearly every day of the year if you want to,” Fretwell said, rattling off all the reasons she stayed despite her dad’s pleas to move back to the southeast. “And I’ve got great friends and a lot of our family have moved out here, and so this is just home.”

COMING TOMORROW: A profile of Scott Adams, the incoming Las Vegas city manager.

Feature photo: Las Vegas City Manager Betsy Fretwell reflects on her 25 years in the public sector on Monday, May 22, 2017. Photo by Jeff Scheid.