This will not be easy, but ambitious, transformational projects rarely are—and Matthew brings unique professional expertise to Longmont on brownfields reuse and revitalization. Beyond his local credentials as Chair of Longmont’s Urban Renewal Authority and on Longmont’s Brownfields Advisory Committee, Matthew has directly helped cities reactivate brownfields, closed landfills, and other challenging sites for most of his professional career.

This includes successfully writing and lobbying for 8 federal brownfields and economic assistance grants totalling approximately $9 million for assessment, cleanup, and reuse planning in communities from Weirton, WV to Norfolk, VA to Green Bay, WI. This funding has leveraged hundreds of millions more in private capital investment and new jobs, from Weirton’s new Form Energy manufacturing facility to Green Bay’s Shipyard Revitalization project.  Additionally, he’s created and led trainings on leveraging funding for brownfields revitalization and been a featured speaker and panelist at 4 National Brownfield Conferences and multiple state and regional brownfield conferences.

Matthew’s approach to budgeting is guided by achieving best value rather than lowest cost, while maintaining a balanced budget that protects long-term fiscal health. Responsible investments are central to this approach—prioritizing projects that lower future operating costs and strengthen community resilience. Preventive infrastructure maintenance, sustainable energy upgrades, and modernized systems may require higher upfront costs but deliver greater efficiency and reliability for residents over time. Matthew has already been trusted and tested with responsible use of taxpayer dollars in at least 8 professional and volunteer roles, including already on City Council. He know what it takes to fund large infrastructure projects, when to redesign outdated processes, and how to leverage local dollars to secure state, federal, and private investments. Through his work with cities and counties nationwide, he has learned what is possible when public resources are managed with care, foresight, and integrity.

From 2016-2020, Matthew served as the president of the Metropolitan Washington Soccer Referees Association (MWSRA), a non-profit corporation providing qualified soccer referees to soccer leagues and schools across the Maryland and DC region. The president is the highest officer and serves functionally as the organization’s executive director. As president, Matthew managed an 11-member board of directors and 7 paid staff, led communications and marketing strategy, and led the contract negotiations and client relationships—ultimately responsible for the part-time and full-time livelihoods of ~500 soccer referees (independent contractors).

His primary responsibility was to increase referee fees—aka revenue—for referees and the organization. Long-time board members wanted to leverage the regional referee shortage to ask for higher fees, but his strategy was to align referee quality—our services—with increased revenue so that clients were investing in our referees, not just paying them. Matthew restructured contracts, operations, and training programs accordingly, and our clients recognized this. 

Matthew measured success in 3 ways. First, he was not only the youngest elected president in MWSRA’s 60-year history, but also was also re-elected. Second, he led the negotiations and renegotiations for over 15 league contracts, including 6 new clients altogether. Third, under his management, the organization surpassed and sustained $1 million in annual gross revenue for the first time in at least 30 years with a net positive operating budget all 4 years he was president—even though the organization had more staff and more paid mentors than ever before. 

From this experience, Matthew learned that aligning incentives—quality of services and fee revenue—helps increase business and creates a shared organizational mission. Matthew also learned that retaining strong talent is essential, and that gaps in talent, when not addressed quickly, can create real problems and gaps in service.

In 2010, Matthew served on a Transportation Master Planning Committee for the University of Maryland, College Park. He saw first-hand how consultants hired had no understanding of how people actually walked and navigated through a key street and offered a cookie-cutter solution. Matthew swore to never be like that. Matthew has worked as a grant writer and project strategist. For many staff, Matthew and is firm were the actual staff member they couldn't afford to hire full-time, helping them plan, submit, and lobby for key grants.

In his current role providing technical assistance to cities small and large, he actively design and guide innovative procurement processes, write RFPs, build financial models for energy projects, analyze utility plans, and evaluate sites for clean energy projects. One of the most unusual parts of my current job that he loves is that he’s usually funded by philanthropies to support cities as a technical partner. That structure means he’s neither being paid by the city nor expected to be anything other than an honest partner to help cities implement their goals. 

Matthew and his colleagues work intimately on project implementation for challenging infrastructure projects with cities and counties across the country. Not as a consultant or 'yes' man, but as someone who cities have come to trust to provide tactical, timely, and constructive assistance. Matthew hopes he can leverage some of his professional experience working with cities and utilities at the cutting-edge of sustainability and resilience to benefit Longmont.

Good eye! Yes, this is accurate because he worked as a soccer referee at the same time he went through high school, college, graduate school, and his full-time jobs.

To learn more about Matthew’s career, check out his LinkedIn profile here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpopkin/