City Employees

Question: You ever talk to your department heads after the work day is over, after 4.30?

Answer: I try my best not to, but yeah, that does happen sometimes, but you know, it’s just, I do thank them for understanding too, and then sometimes, but I do my best not to bother them outside of work hours, but that does happen.

Question: But I bet you talk to public safety folks after hours.

Answer: Oh, all the time. All the time. The fire department has a notification system, and I’m on all of them, they send a text message out to every firefighter whenever there’s a significant call, a recall, a fire, so I get all of those to my work cell phone, just to be able to see what they’re doing there too, and just check in too, and if there’s certain incidents or accidents that happen in the city, I will always be in contact.

Question: And then you went out with DPW in the middle of the night.

Answer: Yeah, I went out, I try to go once a year on things with the various departments that we have, so I go out once a year plowing. This was the first year I did the overnight shift, before I had done the day shift, but there’s a difference in the day versus the night. I would have never expected the DPW prefers the night shift when it comes to plowing because there’s less people on the road. But I didn’t get to see that until I did the night shift, so the 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. plow route. I’ve gone on different search warrants with the police department at various times of the day and night to see what the situations that they have to go through. It’s all things that if you don’t put yourself into that perspective and gain that perspective, and I’m not playing police officer, and I’m not playing plow driver, and I’m not playing firefighter, but I do want to see what it is that they deal with so that when we’re making decisions on we need new fire trucks, we need new firearms for the police department, we need new radio equipment, we need this, we need that, we need a new plow truck, you can see why. And it just puts that into a different perspective in your mind, because I’ll agree with them that they’ll need it, but the explaining why is something that you gain a whole different viewpoint on when you’re actually there. They say the picture’s worth a thousand words, but the experience is worth a full book.

Question: Well, you want to know where they’re coming from.

Answer: Exactly.