Inside Arvada

Inside Arvada's City Management with new City Manager Don Wick

• City of Arvada • Episode 32

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Don Wick talks about his 30-year journey of serving the Arvada community, from starting out as an entry-level police officer in 1985 to recently becoming the new city manager. 

Don explains how all of his previous experience – Police Chief, Public Works Director, and Deputy City Manager – has prepared him to step into his new role leading the city. 

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Visit us at ArvadaCO.gov/Podcast or email us at podcast@arvada.org.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Inside Arvada, the official podcast of the City of Arvada. I'm Sean Starr, one of your hosts. So glad you're tuning in today. We've got a great guest. It's new city manager, don Wick. Don has over 30 years of public service experience, all within the City of Arvada that he calls home home. Prior to his new role as city manager, he was the deputy city manager, where he oversaw key city operations, including police infrastructure, community development, parks and emergency management. And before that, don actually, way back when, began his career as a police officer with the Arvada Police Department, worked his way up to become the police chief, and he also previously served as the public works director.

Speaker 2:

He's done it all and, as always, I'm joined by my co-host, katie Patterson Hi, katie, really leading the city as city manager. And so we talk about some of that past and his experience that makes him really well positioned to take on this role. And then he talks about his vision for the future and I really appreciated hearing some of the future ready mentality that he's bringing into how to take that past experience and carry it forward to the future of our city. So let's get to it, the future of our city. So let's get to it. Hi, don, thanks so much for being here today.

Speaker 3:

Well, hello. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2:

So, to start us off, just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do here at the city.

Speaker 3:

Sure. So without going too far back in history, I grew up in Loveland, Colorado. Love that experience. As a young person growing up it was a great place to be from. And then, you know, went to college. My first real professional job was being a police officer in Laramie, Wyoming. It was a great college town. It was a fun place to be a college-aged person working as a police officer and I spent four years there and then in 1985, I was hired by the city of Arvada as an entry-level police officer here in the city and I've been here pretty much ever since.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and had a couple of jobs since.

Speaker 3:

I have?

Speaker 2:

And today, what are you doing for the city?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so today, you know my journey with the city has been in the police department. I spent 32 years there, the last 10 years as the chief, and then, when I retired, I worked for an air missile defense company in Fort Collins for a couple of years, then returned to the city as the public works director, spent about four years or so in that role, became the deputy city manager for almost three years and then, most recently, here in the last couple of months, I was appointed as the city manager.

Speaker 1:

And, yeah, that's why we wanted to have you on the podcast. We would welcome you at any point. But, taking that new role as the new city manager, share with us how all those previous experiences with the city and the police department and public works, and then most recently as deputy city manager how has that prepared you for the role of city manager that you've been in for what a couple months now?

Speaker 3:

Well, yeah, not quite that long, but, yes, pretty close. Well, I think that the first thing I would say is that when you're in the police department, you're to work with information, make decisions, take action and do the right thing. And so that became really formative, I think, in the rest of my career when I came into public works. Public works is, of course, quite a different environment. There's a lot of engineering, and engineering is all about getting as much information as you can and trying to get all of the into an environment where you had to be really concerned about a lot of the details. Yet at the same time, we had sections of public works that had to do the same thing we did in the police department, for example, the streets team. They would work off limited information, make decisions, take action and do that.

Speaker 3:

So the breadth of that experience, I think, was fascinating. Then, when I came into the deputy city manager's role, I had that portfolio. So I essentially public works, utilities, parks, golf, hospitality, ced and community economic development, and all of those work groups work together, and so my job became about being able to see the bigger picture, helping them make decisions, and what was helpful is that I could apply either the hey, we have enough information to make a decision, or we need to take our time, slow down, get more details and make the right thing. So that combination of all of that work over all of these years and also having responsibility for the largest departments in the city really prepares you to come into the role of the city manager.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a really comprehensive way to think about that. I really appreciate that and that's a great segue to what is a city manager.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's a great question.

Speaker 3:

So you know, really, the city manager is the chief executive officer of the city, so my responsibilities now really include setting strategic direction for the city, for our organization, helping our department directors make decisions and removing obstacles so that they and their teams can actually get the work of the city done.

Speaker 3:

I'm responsible for the execution of the city Council's strategic plan and I have overall responsibility for all of the city's finances and fortunately we have a really great financial department here that I work with very closely to accomplish that Council's direction into working with our executive leadership team around setting goals and objectives for each of our departments that roll up to that bigger mission that the City Council has really charged us with. Of course, community engagement and making sure that our organization is also engaged with our regional partners, like every city in Adams and Jefferson County essentially play a role around the Arvada region, and so we have to be well connected with them. And then you know I think you know equally as important is ensuring that we have a really strong organization culture, that we hire the best people that we can and that we retain those individuals so that our city organization and culture is great, and then we can therefore deliver to the residents what it is that we're set out to do by the city council.

Speaker 1:

Got a lot of responsibility. The city manager's position is a unique one in that it's one of three positions that is actually appointed by city council the judge and one of your previous roles, the police chief, being the other two Curious to learn how the city manager works with city council and some of the priorities that they hear from the community and then translates that to the staff and, as you mentioned, the director-level staff at the city. What does that look like in terms of getting what council wants and then kind of meeting with city staff and directors and what they have going on?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, sure, I think that's a great question. One thing to make sure we make right is that the three appointees are the city manager, the city attorney and the judge. The police chief is in a pointed position by the city manager, but also I think it's worth acknowledging that, you know, the police chief, along with all of our directors, plays a really important role in our city. Obviously would say that the judge, the city attorney and myself we work very closely together. We talk with each other regularly to make sure that, from a systems-wide perspective, that we're on the same page and because we work directly for city council, we all want to make sure that we're coordinated in working in the same direction, even though we all have different responsibilities. You know, I have the executive level, the judge has judicial and to some extent our city attorney sort of you know, works on both of those sides and helps the judge, helps me, while doing really important legal work.

Speaker 3:

But really what it comes down to for us is that we hold a city council strategic retreat every year where we get their strategic goals and objectives, what they want the city team to accomplish, and then the three appointees really take the time to translate that into an understanding that our directors can turn that into their department goals and objectives that work toward meeting the overall strategic goals of the city council. And then each department director will work with their management teams and their staff team members to develop department goals and objectives that then they work on over the course of the year and then we all, you know, report back to each other and make sure that we're in alignment, that we're in alignment with the city's strategic results. And through the course of working up and down our hierarchy we can just really ensure that our daily work objectives are strategically aligned with the city council goals and results.

Speaker 2:

I think I'm putting you on the spot a little with this one, but I'm thinking like an example might be a little helpful here because we're really talking about a lot of really high level. I think sometimes hard for a regular person we're all regular people but for someone who doesn't work for the city to understand and I was thinking maybe something transportation related like Ralston Road and 72nd would be an example of like past that came out of past council strategic planning that the city manager and our capital improvement planning work kind of brought those projects to fruition Is that maybe a good example of something that has that that through line?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, sure we could use. I think the Ralston Road project is a really good one. So, you know, in this case there was an objective to improve Ralston Road to make it safe for motorists, to make it safe for pedestrians and bicyclists, and you know everybody that would use that section of roadway. If you remember the road prior to construction, the sidewalks were super narrow, I mean you couldn't even walk side by side and it felt really uncomfortable and dangerous and the lanes were narrow and you know a lot of those issues. So the city council, you know, had this as a strategic result, which was to improve that portion of the infrastructure as a strategic result, which was to improve that portion of the infrastructure. Then our residents actually became engaged with it when, through a bond initiative, our voters approved the money through bonding, in order to provide the funding for the city to be able to build not only Rossum Road but 72nd Avenue, as you mentioned.

Speaker 3:

So you know, you take those couple of things, those are the really the kind of high level, lofty objectives, that strategic objective that the city council has. But then, once the direction is given and the money is in place in this case the bonding then that's when our city team really kicks in and we say, okay, we've got this overall objective to build the road. What do we need to do? That leads to engineering and design work and making all of the plans and all of the details that it takes to actually build that road. And we get all of that work done.

Speaker 3:

We go out and bid for a contractor. The contractor comes in and the most visible thing that probably our residents see are the construction workers out there tearing up the road, causing delays, putting in all the new infrastructure, and it seems like a lot of that work just takes forever, because that's the reality. That's sort of the rubber hits the road sort of thing. And so you can see where we took this strategic level down to like earthwork being performed Over the course of a couple of years. You end up with this beautiful section of road on Ralston Road, where you have wider lanes, wider sidewalks. It's all of the development that's going around there. Everything feels safer as a result, and that's a tangible outcome from a strategic idea that began many years before that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thanks. I think that's just a helpful one small example big example in that it was an expensive project, but of how that kind of flows through. And so now I'm going to take us back high level. But for you, what do you see as your vision stepping into this role and how do you see yourself as someone leading Arvada?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, you know we mentioned earlier there's a lot of responsibility associated with this job and you know, I think, besides the city council strategic plan, which I'm responsible for executing you executing I am really interested in creating a future-ready Arvada. So we're moving into the future. We have a lot of things that's going on, but there's a lot of things we need to do to really get there, and we're primed with a really great city team that can actually deliver and execute on this. And so what I mean by the future-ready is that how do we build out infrastructure? So what I mean by the future ready is that you know how do we build out infrastructure that's going to meet the future needs of Arvada? We really have to begin that work today in order to be ready for that future, and we have been doing that for a long time. But we also have a lot of old infrastructure that's in the ground or on the surface of the ground that we need to upgrade and repair. So how do we fix that infrastructure or build new infrastructure to get it ready for the future? We have to.

Speaker 3:

As unfortunate as it is, cybersecurity is a significant issue and all of our city network, every city department, relies on our network in order to operate and do the things we need to deliver for this city. We cannot afford our network to be down, and cybersecurity is a constant threat. A lot of people may not realize that the city comes under attack from bad actors on a regular basis, and so our IT team is on top of that. So how do we improve upon that so that we have those secure networks in place so that we don't go down or we don't become subject of ransom or something like that? Strong community engagement is really important. I mean, the work that we do is for the residents of our community, so how do we stay engaged with them and get their feedback and their opinions of things?

Speaker 3:

Another key thing, I think, is how do we use our financial resources as a strategic investment? So, instead of looking at everything as like a line item budget or something along that line, where it's very strict sort of accounting, how do we take the whole financial resource that we have and leverage that in a way that gets the most important things done so that we can deliver on projects? And so thinking strategically about how we use our budget is really key to developing our future. Budget is really key to developing our future. Improving our systems and processes is always going to be an ongoing, but it also helps set us up for that future that we need to attain. And finally, I think a real important thing is the city team's ability to execute on the strategic plans that have been set forth by the council, which represents our residents, of course, in the city, but for us to be able to execute and deliver on those things.

Speaker 1:

And then kind of maybe more like short term, what do you see as some of the priorities that we should be focusing on right now, maybe? What are some of the opportunities? What are some of the challenges? I'm sure our listeners are very well aware it's a great place to live, but it's not without some challenges.

Speaker 3:

Yeah for sure. I think everyone is aware that homelessness is a significant issue, not just for Arvada but for our region, and then really it persists throughout the country. If you visit any other cities, you will definitely see visible homeless. Some cities are much worse in that issue than we are, but homelessness remains a very active issue for many of our community members here. And so what actions can the city council continue to take? They've taken a lot of steps to bring affordable housing into our community, but that's going to remain an issue going forward, especially as prices continue to increase and it becomes more challenging for even some of our own team members to be able to not only work here but live here as well.

Speaker 3:

Fixing our streets is a big one, you know. That is a piece that the city has continuously worked on for a long time. Replacing streets is really expensive and it sounds easy to say I want my street repaved, but some of them you can do surface treatment. On others you have to completely reconstruct, and the costs of those streets are significant. But it's a priority for sure for the city. Upgrading our utility infrastructure is key, and something that this time of year through early winter we worry about is wildfire, and how are we going to protect our community from wildfire?

Speaker 1:

help everybody be better prepared so that, if we were to have a natural disaster such as wildfire, that we know how to respond appropriately to that, as we kind of wrap up or get toward the end of the interview, we like to ask all our guests the opportunity to clear up some misconceptions or some questions you frequently get about the work that you do. So what are some things that you want to clear up about being a city manager?

Speaker 3:

Well, I would say two things. One is that there's a couple of different forms of local government. One is a strong mayor, which is like what you see in Denver. So in a lot of respects a strong mayor operates as the mayor, but also, if you want to kind of blend in the work that the city manager does to. The strong mayor sort of does both of those jobs and then the rest of the council and the department heads, of course, are appointed by the strong mayor.

Speaker 3:

Then there's the council manager form of government, which is what we have here, where we've got our seven council members and then they hire a professional team to actually run and manage the city. And that's how we are aligned here is under a council manager form of government. So while our elected officials certainly play an important, key role in the city, they rely upon the professional staff to carry out that work. The second thing I would say is that there's often this misconception that I'm going to call the city manager and get something done. But the reality is that it's really our city teams that actually perform that work and if people call the department that is responsible for getting something done, fortunately our city team is very responsive and would make things happen, and so I think a misconception there is that if I call the top, I'm going to get it done, but the reality is is that I work through our team in order to get things accomplished.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I think that's a um, a really good one, and our uh team does their best to be, I think, quick and responsive, like you mentioned, and some things just take more time than other things.

Speaker 2:

So, um, not everything has an easy fix, but filling a pothole sure does. So, um, um. So, before we go to the lightning round, because you have had such a long career in Arvada and we've gotten a chance to hear some more about that as we've worked with you over these last few years, we would love if there's any fun or unique story about Arvada that you would be willing to share with our listeners about Arvada that you would be willing to share with our listeners.

Speaker 3:

Well certainly, working in the police department for all of those years generates a lot of very interesting stories. Some are probably best safe for another place, but I'll just tell you one real quick that always sticks out my mind. So when I was a young patrol officer, myself and one of my partner officers got a call of what's called a civil assist, and that's usually to go stand by while people are removing property from maybe a breakup or a relationship problem or something, and that was the case in this situation. I also happened to have my now wife with me. She was riding along with me. That day it was a Sunday, we thought that it'd be pretty quiet and anyway we went to this civil assist and I was, of course, parked down the street. My now wife was observing what was going on, and the person that we contacted was armed with a handgun and he produced that firearm and shoved it into the chest of my partner, who I was with, and that ended up resulting in a essentially a hand-to-hand combat for several minutes, while we tried to disarm this person and and and try to keep ourselves, as well as the people who were involved in this call safe and eventually we were able to successfully disarm this person and take him into custody. And of course my wife is watching all of this go down and you can imagine you know what that was like the conversation later. So.

Speaker 3:

But what's really interesting about this situation is, if you fast forward a few months, while the individual who pulled the weapon on us was taking some R&R time in the Jefferson County Jail, I happened to interrupt a burglary in progress in Lake Arbor and when I went to make contact with these individuals, of course they took off in their car.

Speaker 3:

I got in this pursuit and they ended up pulling over in about the 8100 block of Sheridan and as I was walking up to make longer, the Westminster Mall but at the time the Westminster Mall was up there at 88th and Sheridan and they bailed out of the car. The driver took off and ran through the May DNF store and I'm chasing him on foot. He's knocking clothes over and I'm trying to jump over that and chase this guy. And anyway, a couple of Westminster officers happened to be outside the main DNF store and he ran right into the safety of their arms and was taken into custody. Now why I tell you that story is because later, when we were recovering the property from inside the vehicle, they had actually burglarized that guy's house that attacked the other officer and myself. So the irony of it is that happened. He's in jail. I interrupt this burglary and also apprehended the people that broke into his house.

Speaker 1:

So full circle, I'd heard the first half of that story, but not the second half, so I'm glad you shared that with us. I'm sure you've got dozens and dozens of those.

Speaker 2:

Got a few of those.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, all right. Well, with that, we'll transition to the lightning round, if you're ready for that Don All right. What is your favorite thing about Arvada? It can be a place, a fact or even a hidden gem.

Speaker 3:

Well, I think the thing that I my favorite thing about Arvada is the diversity of stuff that we have here like businesses. You think of Grandma's Noodles or Hendrickson Apps or Red Silo, for example. We also have some long-term bakeries like Rylander and Dossmeyer and La Patisserie I think I said that correctly. La Petisserie I think I said that correct. And then you know, we also have specialty aerospace companies biotech you know that do a lot of things here in Arvada.

Speaker 3:

But I think a couple of things that are really interesting is that you know we have the Ralston Cemetery, which is a historic cemetery at 64th Avenue near McIntyre and it really tells a historic part of Arvada and nobody would suspect that there is this little cemetery kind of in the middle of a neighborhood. And then I think the other thing that's really kind of unique about Arvada that people may not know is that there were the old coal mines up along Leiden Road and Excel used to store gas in those mines and when they were ready to extract the gas from there, they worked a deal with a city where we flooded those mines with water to extract the gas. And still today there is water in those mines.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, very cool.

Speaker 1:

Interesting Talk about institutional knowledge. You've got it covered All right. So the next question is what is your first, last or best concert?

Speaker 3:

Well, I think my best concert happened a few years ago at the Arvada Center in the amphitheater, where I got to see Kenny Wayne Shepard. I'm a big Kenny Wayne Shepard. I'm a big Kenny Wayne Shepard fan, and what was really fun about that was the staff at the Arvada Center. Let me go backstage, and even though I didn't get to meet Kenny Wayne Shepard, I was able to stand off stage and watch the concert from that perspective. That was so much fun. Watching all the things that really go on in the background and then just loving his music anyway was really great. So that was a great experience, because you yourself used to be in a band, right, well, I used to play trumpet and, yeah, I was a trumpet player. And when I was in high school, we had a band and actually all those years, years ago, made what's now a record called like actually a vinyl record. So that was. That was a lot of fun, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Man of many talents, so what was your first job?

Speaker 3:

So my first job was I was a newspaper delivery person, and this was in the days when you actually got your newspapers delivered. You folded them, rubber band them and went out on your bike and threw them on the porch. And I'll tell you, what's important about that job is that you had to buy your newspapers from the dealer, you had to buy your rubber band, you had to buy your canvas bags and then you had to go collect the money from the people that you would deliver to, and what this really taught me was about managing time, managing resources, figuring out efficiencies and also how to deliver appropriate customer service. And that newspaper job might have sounded really simple, but when you think about everything that's involved in that, those are skills that I still use today.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely A lot more responsibility than I would have ever assumed. And then, finally, this might be a hard one, but do you have a favorite project that you've done with the city? Maybe a couple, I don't know.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, Well, we talked about Ralston Road and 72nd Avenue. Those would have been ones. I was in public works at the time and really proud of those projects. In our teams. You don't get anything done by yourself. You have to rely on others, and I think that those major projects are a really important example of how we all work together to get something done.

Speaker 3:

I would say probably the community police stations. When I was the chief, I worked on a philosophy of community policing that included building our community stations embedded in our neighborhoods so that we had greater community engagement and we were able to take localized community action as a police department in those neighborhoods. And, as you know, we've got three community stations plus our main station at City Hall, and I think that it's been an effective strategy for policing our community and we're able to engage in a different kind of way than what you might see from other departments, and so I'm really proud of that, and it took a lot of our police department team to make that happen and it still operates effectively today, so pretty proud of that one Absolutely as you should Well.

Speaker 1:

That concludes our interview, don. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. We know you're extremely busy, so I appreciate you making time for us Absolutely and thanks for having me today.

Speaker 2:

Thanks Don.

Speaker 3:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Before we let you go, as a reminder, we love hearing from our listeners. You can stay in touch by texting us. There's a link at the top of each episode. You can also reach out via email at podcast at arvadaorg. We really like hearing from our listeners hear about what they enjoy, what they like to hear more of, maybe even episode ideas and more.

Speaker 1:

Some upcoming events we have is the 4th of July fireworks coming up on Friday, july 4th, fireworks begin around 9.15 pm at Stinger Sports Complex. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter for any weather-related updates. You can visit arvadacogov slash fireworks for more information about that event. But before that we have our first Movies Around Town event of the summer on Friday, june 27th at Memorial Park, where we'll be showing a free showing of the movie the Goonies. At Memorial Park.

Speaker 1:

We also have our People's Choice Movie poll up now as well, and you can vote which movie you want to see on our final Movies Around Town event on August 29th at Clear Creek Valley Park. That webpage is arvadacogov slash movies. And then our city forester, ian McDonald, reached out recently and wanted to let everyone know about Emerald Ash Borer. It continues to spread in the city, and so we want to make sure residents are aware of how to identify ash trees on their property and then what corrective action they need to take, and so, for more information on that, you can visit our webpage at arvadagov.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then back in May a little over a month ago now Arvada Fire and the city hosted some community meetings about Arvada's community wildfire protection plan. This is a plan that the city and the fire department have been coordinating on for quite some time now, and so there's a lot of information in the recording from that meeting and that's available on YouTube. And then the fire department's really leading that effort, and so there's more information on their website about that that we will link to that effort, and so there's more information on their website about that that we will link to. And additionally, we had Sam Rogers on back on episode 29 about the Ralston Creek improvements near the Croke Canal, out near Westwood's golf course, and with all of the rain we got in May and June, they did have some construction delays, and so the trail was. They were hoping to get it reopened by June, but that got delayed and pushed back until sometime in July.

Speaker 2:

And last but not least, this is the last week to take the water quality survey that closes at the end of the month, and so community feedback is really helping that team ensure we can continue to deliver high quality, reliable and transparent water services. And so it's just a five 10 minute survey and we'll link to that in the show notes. And thank you again. So much to our guest today, new city manager Don Wick. Be sure to listen to our next episode We'll have parks manager Steve Guftison on and, as always, today's episode was recorded and edited by Arvada Media Services.

Speaker 1:

And today's fun fact is that Arvada's first city manager was Vernon F Barnett, who was appointed in 1955 after Arvada went from a mayor council form on government to its current council manager format.

Speaker 2:

Whoa.