LEXINGTON, Minn. –(Dec. 5, 2013) — When Dot Heifort announced that she would be retiring as the city administrator for the City of Lexington, many wondered what the city would look like without a person that had served at city hall in some capacity for the last 30 years.
After hours of interviews with potential candidates the city council decided to offer the city’s top job to Bill Petracek. Patracek has been on the job now for a few weeks and even though Lexington is a rather small community there has been a wealth of information thrown his way as he as assumed his new role.
“You spend a lot of the first few months just getting to know people; people that you are going to be working with and solving problems of your community with, so when you’re getting to know people, trying to remember names, things like that, as well as gathering information about the city and the day to day operations that I have oversight of,” said Petracek.
Petracek previously spent nine years as the city administrator in Fox Lake, Wisconsin and he was thrilled to have the opportunity to move back to his home state of Minnesota. Petracek sees himself as a problem solver and is ready to dig in and help Lexington become an even better community.
“When I came in for the interview process, my first impression as a city administrator is the property maintenance side of it,” he said. “I think there’s some things that we can do to the clean up community and I think working with the city council, those are things that will be to me high priority.”
Petracek did notice that the city did a great job in some areas that will make his job easier. “They’re financially stable, so that’s a good thing to come into and my goal is to keep them financially stable.”
Over the last year much has been made of the relationship in Lexington between some on the city council and the city staff. The relationship became so acrimonious that the council was banned from city hall during normal business hours. Petracek hopes that he is able to work with all parties to develop solid working relationships. “Coming in you have to sort of humble yourself your the liaison between the staff and council…I think one of my strong traits is being able to mediate…we will see how it goes.”
