Stafford discusses his retirement from city manager
Navasota City Manager Brad Stafford is retiring and will take on a new role with Bleyl Engineering. With his departure there are many unanswered questions.
Stafford discusses the changes with Navasota Examiner Publisher Ana Cosino and Willy 98.7 FM Radio Personality Kenny Graves and who could potentially be interim city manager. Find out those answers and answers to user-submitted questions in this edition of Grilling Stafford.
Highlights from Grilling Stafford – episode 74
In the last Grilling Stafford, you mentioned a new fire truck. It looks like the fire station’s garage is already full, where will the new truck be kept? “It will be kept in there. We are going to trade one in and replace it with a new truck.”
How many hydrants are in Navasota? “I had an investigator look into that this morning, and there are approximately 500 fi re hydrants in our city limit.”
Sometimes the City sends announcements warning that hydrants will be flushed. Approximately how many hydrants are flushed in a night? “They will flush the 500 that are working. We have several that are not working right now, and we are going through a process to get those rebuilt. We flush those 500 and it takes six guys most of the night. They start after 9 p.m. and they split up and are responsible for certain areas.”
The road at Holland and Tenth Streets will probably be repaired soon. There is an old railroad track at that location that will need to be removed. Does the City or the train company pay for the removal? “You know we haven’t crossed that bridge yet. I don’t really know, but I would think they are probably going to say the City is going to be responsible. We have that in several locations in the downtown area on some of these side streets where old rail spurs were and maybe even the main tracks used to be there – I don’t know. Yeah that has bothered me for almost 16 years. I’d like to remove those tracks from there.”
Did the city appoint an interim city manager? If so, who? “Next Monday they are going to appoint an interim city manager. Their thought process right now is that they would hire Bleyl Engineering who in turn would appoint me to be interim. However, we do have a second in command for whenever the city manager or interim city manager is not available, and that will be Shawn Myatt.
Chief Shawn Myatt is obviously still the Chief of Police. Is he also still the Assistant City Manager in addition to this other job duty they have assigned him with? “He is still the chief and he is still the assistant. The way that process works is if I [Brad Stafford] am unavailable by phone or in person, Shawn [Myatt] will make the decision on whatever needs to be made. It shouldn’t add a lot of duties to him, but he can handle it. He is up to it. He has been doing this a long time.”
To view the full video of Grilling Stafford – Episode 74, or to watch archived episodes, visit The Examiner website, www.navasotaexaminer.com. If you would like to submit a question for Grilling Stafford, email news@navasotaexaminer.com. New episodes of Grilling Stafford are released every Thursday.