“I was formerly the city’s engineer as a consultant through Stantec, which is an engineering firm based out of Canada,” said Statz. “[I] ended up becoming a client service manager or a city engineer and served a number of smaller municipalities as their city engineer,” Statz said.
One of the cities that he worked with in that role was Centerville. Since 2007, Mark Statz has been their city engineer. Now, he has taken over the role of city administrator.
“I’m very excited about the opportunity, it was the right fit for me,” he said. “I was ready for a change and this was an opportunity that presented itself that was different, but not wildly different.” Statz said.
He also said that his work as a city engineer has prepared him for many aspects of the new job.
“I’ve counted up and I’ve sat through over 600 city council meetings,” he said. “So not unfamiliar with city business and municipal government business.”
The work done by a city administrator can often fly under the radar of a city resident, even though their work touches almost every aspect of a city.
“The job of city administrator is sometimes difficult to explain as I’ve found out over the past month or so, trying to explain to my family and friends, ‘what is it that you’re going to do?’ I have to stop and think, and you say, ‘well I administrate, I’m an administrator,’ but there’s more to it than that, of course, but generally I think your first order of business is to keep the town running properly,” he said.
“We run a building inspection program and right now we’re very busy with all hail, roofing and siding permits and obviously we’re also are in charge of infrastructure. We have a sewer system, a water system, storm water system, road system, park system, trails, so we have a lot of infrastructure that we take care of. And then we also have zoning issues that we deal with, both new development, redevelopment, people’s existing homes, whether they want to put up a shed, they want to expand their home or build a new driveway or those types of things,” he explained.
Statz says that beyond dealing with infrastructure and zoning, he also hopes to get to know residents and businesses and help meet their needs.
“I want to engage with some of the people and businesses in town and talk about a few more issues: what can we do to make their lives better. It’s more about: what can we create here as an environment for Centerville? What’s the community culture like? How do we help make the community a better place? That’s what I’m kind of looking forward to is more of the soft-sided items of community engagement and community development,” he said.
“I think people should know that I’m committed to their city and I care a lot about their city, I’ve been here for ten years, so it’s not like I’m a brand new guy who flew in from out of town and is going to start changing a bunch of things,” Statz said. “I think we have a very good set of infrastructure, a very good staff here, we’ve got a very veteran staff. I think in fact, I may be the youngest person on staff here at 41-years-old so we have a very good, dedicated, veteran staff who all have a lot of tenure here and so I want people to know that they’re in good hands.”
“If they have any doubts in putting their trust in me, put their trust in the rest of the staff, I mean, you’ve got a very good group of people here who are working for you, and it’s a very efficient group, we’re a very small group for this town, yet we’re able to accomplish what we need to.”
