Looking ahead to the new calendar year, Levelland City Manager James Fisher is looking to bring stability to his staff and community.
Reaching his first 90 days as the city manager, Fisher had the opportunity to observe and mull over what direction he would like his staff, council and community to follow.
However, the main thing Fisher feels that needs to be established from the start is stability.
“The biggest thing that I’ve seen that needs to be addressed is stability,” said Fisher. “We’ve had three key positions leave within a very short time frame and it’s caused the boat to rock.”
With two positions open, the HR Director and Finance Manager, Fisher explained that prior to those vacancies, there have been a level of transition and new strategic visions being implemented.
“Every time you have a key person leave there’s a new strategic vision, a new way of how things are done, so the employees are looking for stability and the community is looking for stability,” explained Fisher. “We’ve got a lot of great things going on but we’ve got to have stability in the leadership area and it’s challenging in the aspect that the leadership of the council could change as we head into a general election for the mayoral and council positions.”
Fisher added that he understands that there have been things in the past that were done and not everybody felt positive about it. He explained that happens within any community.
“Every community has council members that the community approves of and some that some might now,” said Fisher. “That is the case everywhere.”
Looking at the big picture, Fisher is trying to find ways to appropriately communicate with the community, staff, council and everyone in between. The whole goal of trying to bring stability and efficient communication is to rid conversations of rumors in order to provide anyone and everyone with the proper information when asking questions.
Retention of staff and filling positions is hard for any business in any industry and Fisher is keen on making sure his staff are shown the proper appreciation they deserve while allotting them the opportunities to grow within the city staff and even finish their working careers while employed by the City of Levelland.
“We have great people and I want to continue to look for ways to help them be even better and give them the opportunity if they want to grow in their position,” said Fisher. “We have a few longtenured employees who are you know looking at that horizon of retirement.”
Moving forward, Fisher will be looking to city staff being cross trained in various areas in order to fill in a position if needed. In turn, he explained that means investing in the employee and possibly looking at pay.
“When I mention pay, I do not mean everyone is going to get a huge raise, but we are going to be looking at things so we can be the community and employer of choice,” explained Fisher. “That includes discussion surrounding work schedules and there may be options, however, the discussions need to be had in order to see where we stand in the works of everything.”
In terms of servicing the city, Fisher touched on communication a second time as he would like to find ways of informing the community possibly through newsletter or an alternative means aside from council meetings. As projects for the city come to fruition, Fisher would like the city to be able to provide information regarding those projects.
“This year we’ve got some big project coming up with TxDOT working on College Avenue in the beginning in of the summer and it’s a six-to-ninemonth project that’s going to be mayhem,” said Fisher. “We’re going to be working on that and on the heels of that we’ve got our seal coat project that’s going to be happening to the east of that on a lot of residential streets. We’re going to have to do a superb job of communicating so that people can get home, emergency services can respond, delivery trucks can get where they’ve got to go and when mom is running five minutes late getting the kids to a sporting event or a community event, she doesn’t think that she can go this way and then find out the roads not available.”
The city is also looking at replacing water meters in town as many of them are old. Staff will be trying to go to more updated procedures, but at the same time in doing that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency is requiring all cities to do a lead and copper inventory on all water meters within their jurisdiction.
“We’ve got to physically go in and actually dig up the meter and a portion of the service line not that goes back to the house to say what kind of line is it,” explained Fisher. “That’s going to take a lot of time but there’s going to be people that don’t want us digging in their yard because they worked really hard to make it look good. That’s another one of those things that we’re going to have to really go out of our way to figure out how we can communicate to the public.”
Last Spring, the city put together an infrastructure plan that covered various aspects of the city and what needed work in the future. A plan that estimated millions of dollars’ worth projects, Fisher explained that it is time to put together a plan to get the ball rolling on those projects. He added that putting together the plan was a great first step, but if it is not put in place then it was not worth the expense putting it together.
“We have to figure out how we’re going to start addressing some of the needs that are in there because every year we don’t we probably add 5% or 6% to that cost if not more,” explained Fisher. “Eventually we need to develop a strategic plan of where we want to see the city going.”
Fisher hopes to see continued growth for the City of Levelland and added that there are groups of people who are not fond of growth, and some may want it as fast as they can.
“I think the important thing is to keep the idea of what makes Levelland this amazing city and incorporate that while moving forward,” said Fisher. “Mindless growth could bring negative consequences to the overall picture of Levelland. Let’s be intentional with where we want to grow and how we want it to look.”