Kris Manderfeld, New Ulm Public Utilities Director, will retire from public utlities at the end of the year. She worked with public utlities for 32 years — 26 years in the finance department and six years as director.

NEW ULM – The last day of 2025 will be New Ulm Public Utilities (NUPU) Director Kris Manderfeld’s final day at the job.

Manderfeld has worked at public utilities for 32 years — 26 years in the finance department and six years as director.

As she prepares to retire, Manderfeld is proud to leave behind a robust and reliable public utility department.

“This is a great utility,” she said. “I am really proud of the employees that are here because they care about the system. We’ve got a lot of hometown people here that live and work in the community. It is important to them to have a good system”

Manderfeld is a New Ulm native. She graduated from New Ulm Public High School and later attended MSU for three years, but was not sure what to do after college. She first got a job at AMPI’s regional office. After taking an evening accounting class she decided to pursue it as a career. She returned to MSU and got an accounting degree. Manderfeld worked for Biebl-Ranweiler CPA firm as a part-time intern while attending school. After graduating she received a full-time position, working with the firm for four years.

In Aug. 1993, she began working for the NUPU in the finance department. Manderfeld said after the birth of her daughter, she wanted a better work/life balance and made the switch from public accounting firm to a public utilities.

She said the job duties were similar to her work at the CPA firm, but the difference was she got to see more of the day to day work.

“When you are in public accounting, you see just the end,” she said. “You see the end of businesses where they are filing their taxes or you do an audit for them. You never see the day to day stuff. That was one of the things that intrigued me about the utility.”

Another benefit of working for public utilities is the public service aspects of the job. Manderfeld said she always enjoyed giving back to the community.

Manderfeld started in 1993 as the Utility Accountant. A few years later her position was changed to Assistant Finance Director, which including supervisory work.

Manderfeld said the finance work for a public utility is similar to finance work for a business. That means completing month end entries, reviewing all transactions and preparing documents for auditing, conducting. With public utilities, she conducted rate studies on cost of services for all utilities. NUPU has five utilities: electric, water, gas, wastewater and district energy (steam).

“It is very unique to have five utilities,” Manderfeld said. “A lot will have electric and gas, with water and wastewater done by the city.”

Manderfeld moved from finance to the utility director position six years ago. She was appointed interim Utility Director in Feb. 2019 and took over full-time in May.

Manderfeld said taking on the director position was not something she expected to happen when she first joined public utilities in 1993. She said many of the past directors had come from an engineering background, but she said there had been other directors who came from financing. It gave her the confidence to apply for the position.

Manderfeld said one of the greatest challenges of her time as director was the COVID pandemic of 2020, which began less than a year after she took on the position.

“That was a challenge,” she said. “We had to figure out how to keep our employees safe. We separated everybody as much as we could. A lot of people worked from home. We had a very small staff at the utility.”

The work crews also needed to be staggered to prevent everyone getting sick at one time. As public utility workers they were considered essential workers and could not be furloughed.

She said the IT department also needed to step up to make sure people could work from home and attend remote meetings. Many of the IT changes implemented in 2020 are still going.

In 2021, the nation faced a spike in gas prices. An ice storm in Texas froze equipment impacting the gas supply for much of the country.

Manderfeld said during that crisis, NUPU was able to weather price increases thanks to a natural gas hedging program. About 50% of New Ulm’s gas had been locked in at a lower price.

“That spared community some of the discomfort caused by the prices hikes,” she said.

Another unique change during her tenure was the rise of electrical vehicle charging stations. Manderfeld said the first charging station was placed at 2nd North and German Street and is owned by public utilities. Another unit was installed in the City Hall parking lot using funds from the Volkswagen settlement. She said most dealerships have a station now.

Manderfeld said during her time as director, staff was able to develop a capital assessment plan for all five utilities.

“The hope was to have a roadmap for future directors, future supervisors and future commission to know where that utility will be going and the needs for the next five to ten years,” she said.

Looking forward to New Ulm immediate needs, Manderfeld said there are major water and wastewater projects in development as well as planning for a new electrical substation on the north side of town.

However, the biggest change coming to public utilities is Minnesota’s mandate to be carbon free by 2040.

“That will be a major goal to reach, but we are already planning for it,” she said.

Manderfeld said the greatest challenge for public utilities are funding challenges. She said prices are continuing to go up on everything and public utilities needs to keep cost inline for users.

Another challenge is maintaining a knowledgable workforce. She said when longtime employees leaves, there is loss of internal knowledge. The struggle is to make sure that knowledge is retained and passed on to the new employees.

Manderfeld said another thing that made New Ulm Public Utilities unique is many of the employees are longtime staff.

“New Ulm is privileged to have high-quality employees,” Manderfeld said. “There is no way I could do this job without the department heads. They are the experts and I rely on them. These guys are the ones who come in when it’s storming or in the middle of the night. I am proud to lead them. They make my job easier for sure.”

Manderfeld’s last day as director is Dec. 31. New Ulm’s Public Utilities Commission approved the appointment of Brett Fleck to the Utilities Director position, effective March 16, 2026.

Manderfeld plans for retirement are to spend more time with her four grandsons as well as spend more time gardening, quilting and reading.

Looking back on her time with public utilities, Manderfeld said the best part was giving back to the community.