As Greeley and its region continues to grow at a high rate of speed, the city staff that supports and serves Greeley must adapt and change, as well.
Greeley’s public works department, the entity within the city most responsible for the maintenance and construction of roads and most other critical infrastructure in Greeley, is at the forefront of that growth and adaptation. After an external analysis of the department was commissioned, the city has decided, following the advice of the analysts, to add a second deputy director position.
That position will be filled by the current department director, Joel Hemesath, alongside his current deputy Will Jones. That move necessitates the opening for a new director.
“I’m excited about it,” Hemesath said by phone this week. “Trying to put my skills where I think they best serve the community.”
Hemesath’s position will be more directly associated with what the city is calling “asset management.” That will be a strategic, longer-view type of management position, playing into Hemesath’s strengths as an engineer and his experience in the department working with regional allies.
“It’s trying to stay ahead and plan accordingly,” he said.
According to city manager Roy Otto, the move would have kept Hemesath in his director role and hired a new deputy beneath him, but for Hemesath’s own preference for a role more closely attuned to the one that was being created.
“The analysis indicated that our infrastructure needs, with expanding infrastructure and how we manage those assets, those were areas we have to improve upon,” Otto said. “Public Works is one of our largest departments, and look at, for example, Water and Sewer, two deputies and a director. We’d promoted Will Jones, a talented man who was in Greeley Evans Transit, to deputy for Joel some time ago, and some divisions answered to (Jones), pulling the burden off Joel. What (the analysts) focused on was they needed an operations deputy and then on the other hand one in more strategic planning — capital improvements, asset management — and based upon that, we created the new position.”
Otto said that Hemesath’s expertise lent itself more aptly to the new deputy position, and at Hemesath’s request, that was the direction the city decided to take.
“We’ll recruit a director who gets more life out of administering the entire department,” Otto said. “The biggest area where we can find additional investment or additional prioritization was in this growing infrastructure need. How do we keep up with that? We need to hone in. We’ve done some discussion — the Food Tax, our primary funding source for non-utility infrastructure maintenance, was put in place in 1990, and our population has grown about 77% since then. When that happens, a lot of infrastructure goes along with that, more than just streets and roads. It’s parks and buildings, all those things. Capital maintenance, construction. Those are important, and Joel’s a talented engineer, the best we have to apply toward that.”
Hemesath has been with the city 22 years, starting as a stormwater engineer and working his way up to director of the department. He’s seen a great deal of change in that time.
“When I started, we were really booming,” Hemesath said. “I think that’s why they added me, with so much development going on, subdivisions, residential growth. I think we’re smarter to learn through that, going at such a pace then, you don’t appreciate what you’re missing. We did a good job of adapting, building things properly and of good quality.”
Otto sees the need as a philosophical one as much as functional. Describing a four-quadrant approach to needs assessment, he suggested that there’s scales of importance and of urgency. In the upper-left quadrant is the important and urgent, in the upper-right is important but not urgent. While the upper-left requires the most immediate attention, the upper-right is no less important just because it can be put off a moment or two — or a year or two — longer.
“You get constantly under the tyranny of the urgent,” Otto said. “You end up losing track of your long-term strategic issues in the upper-right. Very important, but not urgent. It’s coordinating issues of regional infrastructure, for example, but without appropriate staffing, you’re dealing with the tyranny of the urgent. This helps you and the department focus.”
Otto said the position will be hired after the new deputy city manager is hired to replace the retired Becky Safarik.
Growth isn’t stopping in Greeley any time soon, and Otto, Hemesath and the city are ready for it.
“The next milestone, we’re right on that 110,000 people, and people start saying next is 125,000,” Otto said. “That’s a much larger community. It’s a growing metro, as well. We’re different now, if we were 125,000 on the plains by ourselves, nobody around us, that’s one thing. But that’s not what’s happening in Northern Colorado.”
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Changes at Greeley public works signal continued rapid growth for city - Greeley Tribune
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