Stafford reflects on tenure as city manager

Not since 1928-1946 and the 18-year tenure of City Manager R. J. Brule, has Navasota seen the degree of momentum and positive change that it has under soon-to-be retired City Manager, Brad Stafford. While Brule and the WPA brought parks, bridges and a stadium to Navasota, Stafford put the name “Navasota” on the map of national retail consciousness. He also tackled 19th and 20th century infrastructure trying to accommodate 21st century needs. Before retiring Oct. 29, Stafford shared memories as Navasota city manager for nearly 16 years with The Examiner.

Ready for emergencies

As city manager, Brad Stafford has weathered hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts and freezes but he retires with Navasota “100 times better prepared” than when he arrived. Early on he was approached by Fire Chief Jason Katkoski about the City’s lack of emergency preparedness and lack of interest “to step up to the plate.”

Stafford said, “I give Jason a whole lot of credit for having the knowledge and the wisdom to stand up and say, ‘Look, we’re not prepared!’”

City council approved hiring someone to work with Katkoski to create an emergency preparedness plan. Once in place, Navasota was able to access grant funds and, along with funds from Grimes County, created an Emergency Operation Center at the Navasota Center with a generator, televisions and audio-visual equipment.

Stafford said, “Our first use of it was during Hurricane Ike and it worked good. We have an agreement with Grimes County that they can utilize the EOC because they helped us access that state funding. The EOC is available to all of Grimes County.”

Infrastructure

While much street and drainage work has been accomplished during his tenure, Stafford agrees with those citizens who feel that not enough has been done.

He said, “We’ve done what we could financially without the City taking on millions and millions of extra debt. Fortunately, before I arrived, the city council, city manager and city staff created a fund called the Street and Drainage Fee. It was minimal when I took over but we were able to leverage those dollars and started annual street projects.”

Streets and Sanitation went from chip sealing and patching to asphalt overlays and chip seal, has repaved many streets, cleaned out ditches and replaced culverts to drain water out of the city to alleviate flooding. Stafford is most proud, however, of the Foster Street and Railroad Street drainage projects.

Stafford said, “The problem is you have over 200-acres back toward the hospital that drains to the intersection of Farquhar and McAlpine. When it rains hard and fast, it can’t get out of there fast enough so we’ve improved all those conduits putting in 7x7-foot box culverts in at Railroad Street.”

He continued, “On Foster, putting underground storm drains, cleaning up the ditch and installing storm pipe all the way to the channel helped pull a lot of water out and keep those people dry.”

The Texas A&M Bush School Capstone Project examining Navasota’s Capital Improvement Projects confirms that work has been done in every quadrant of the City.

Stafford said, “We stretched our tax dollars and utility dollars to the max to get these projects done.”

The downturn

Thursday, April 21, 2016, Stafford held the toughest meeting of his career as the City prepared to reduce its staff of 108 by 21%.

He said, “We had things happen within the oil industry across the country which drastically impacted our local manufacturing industries. We saw them rapidly reduce production which in turn reduced employees. That impacted the bottom line budget for the City because we were selling less gas. We had citizens leaving town, out of work, and our revenue stream dropped dramatically.”

He continued, “When you have a natural gas system, you’re totally different from being a taxing entity alone. When your industrial customers reduce their usage by 50%, and they purchase more natural gas than all city residents combined, it impacts the budget.”

Immediately, city staff cut expenses while still maintaining service and service levels.

Stafford said, “Staff did a great job of cutting back, probably better than anybody ever imagined they’d do. And they were scared. I offered to resign and save money but city council said ‘no.’ It was obvious. We had a projection that we would go between $1-2 million in the red by the end of the year if we didn’t make more changes.”

Those “changes” involved looking at the positions and the ability of individuals to do three jobs instead of one.

Stafford said, “It was the worst thing I’ve had to do as a city manager. As a municipal employee for over 31 years, it was the toughest thing I’ve ever done because we had gone through the efforts to build our staff, to build up the team. We had great people in place and now we were actually going to have to let people go who were doing their job.”

Thanks to the efforts of Human Resources’ Peggy Johnson, every employee who didn’t retire, had a job to go to. City council approval of one month’s severance pay and one month’s notice gave employees essentially two months’ pay to help them land on their feet.

Stafford said, “I still struggle with it because I knew everybody’s family. When they’re sitting across the table from you, you see that you’re affecting a whole family, and they’re part of your family because you’ve grown to be a great team and family. I don’t ever want to do that again.”

After the layoff, City staff reexamined the allocation of revenue from its industrial base and looked toward creating a more diversified economy.

Stafford said, “The more diverse your economy is, the stronger your community will be, and I think Navasota has done a really good job of balancing that out over the years.”

Part 4: Parting thoughts