He has logged marathons in London to Logan and managed six cities in two countries: Britain and the United States. In fact, Bradshaw is running an American city without being an American citizen.
It is rather strange, acknowledges the 61-year-old Briton, who has been Mapleton's city manager since 2003.
"I've gone from being the only Mormon chief executive [British-speak for city manager] in the U.K. to being the only British city manager in the States," says Bradshaw, still 30 months shy of U.S. citizenship.
He also has gone from earning $130,000 a year as Bromsgrove's chief executive in central England's Worcestershire County to $45,000 as Mapleton's city manager in Utah County. And instead of overseeing a city of 100,000, he now watches over a city of 6,200.
His only regret about coming to America: "I should have made the transition 20 years earlier," he laments.
Since moving with his wife, Anne, to Utah in 1997, Bradshaw rarely misses anything about his British homeland - even the retirement stipend for his 30 years helping manage Daventry, Saxmundham, Ormskirk, Tamworth and Bromsgrove. He still collects it each month - along with his Mapleton salary.
When talk turns to America, Bradshaw accents the positive - and makes light of his Manchester origins.
"People ask me, 'Where's the accent from?' " he says, laughing. "I reply, 'Mapleton. We all speak like this.' "
He would rather talk about America than his British brogue.
And why not? Things are going swimmingly for the Bradshaws on this side of the Atlantic. He drives a Jaguar to work. Anne is a successful LDS novelist. Their four children all live in the United States. And Bradshaw - who has taught at Brigham Young University and earned a master's degree there - finds Payson Canyon an idyllic place to run each morning with Utah County sheriff's Deputy David Hill.
"When he dies," Hill says, "he wants his headstone to read: Here lies the fittest corpse in the cemetery."
After his family, Bradshaw's true love is running. He logs 60 miles or more a week. Managing an American city runs a close third. He finds it easier to report to a mayor and five council members in Mapleton than the 40 to 50 councilors he had to answer to - and for - in British cities.
"It is absolutely refreshing," Bradshaw says of his U.S. managerial chores. "Cities in America have more power to get things done."
Bradshaw recalls his days as a deputy manager in Ormskirk when the then-prime minister, Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher, nixed the nation's free school-milk program. The city's 57 councilors, most of them members of the opposition Labor Party, vowed the city would keep the milk flowing.
Despite his conservative leanings and personal misgivings, Bradshaw was duty-bound to hire 40 "milk administrators" to dole out the dairy drinks. Principals - ordered by Thatcher to refuse the subsidy - were obliged to bar the municipal milk from the premises.
That dispute was milquetoast compared with the rubbish he waded through later as Bromsgrove's manager. Another Thatcher edict had forced the city to cut the cost of its garbage service or let a French firm take over. Bradshaw had to tell the city's 47 "bin men" they would need to work a full 40 hours, accept a pay cut and lay off nine of their numbers to beat the private firm's bid and thereby keep their contract.
The workers staged a strike and the city's garbage began piling up in the streets, raising a stink along with residents' hackles. After several weeks, the mayor and 41 councilors instructed Bradshaw to fire the lot and hire replacements. Driving home from work later, he listened to the mayor being interviewed on the radio.
"He said the [council] members all support the chief executive [city manager] in his decision," Bradshaw remembers. "I said, 'What? What? I never made the decision.' So all the focus switched from the city to this Mormon - religion now became part of the story - chief executive who is blasting a new path in the U.K. by firing all these workers."
Unfamiliar with the routes, the new garbage collectors were slow. Some residents chased them off and then called the city to complain their trash had not been collected. A giant banner at the Transport and General Workers Union national meeting in Brighton read: "Bradshaw, the Bastard from Bromsgrove."
Bradshaw weathered the storm and the criticism. And he saved the city more than $300,000.
"I saw it through," he says. "But I don't think I slept for three months."
Bradshaw is cheeky as well as cheerful. Anne recalls her husband's remark when she was delivering their first child on a Sunday. "You've broke the Sabbath," she recalls him saying. "You're not supposed to labor on the Sabbath."
Ribbed by friends for he and Anne's frequent moves during the past two years, Bradshaw quips, "A moving target is much harder to hit."
Bradshaw has no plans, however, to move back to Britain. His goal is to build Mapleton's business base - a Subway sandwich shop is the city's main commercial anchor - to fund city services and capital-improvement projects. He also is keen about shaving more minutes off his best marathon time: 3 hours and 27 minutes.
"I've worked it out on my calculator that by the time I'm 147, I'll be under two hours and be able to beat the Ethiopians."
meddington@sltrib.com
