T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY From left to right, Marshalltown Police Chief Chris Jones, Parks and Recreation Director Jeff Evenson, City Administrator Carol Webb and Housing and Community Development Director Deb Millizer are pictured at city hall recently. Not pictured is Fire Chief Christopher Cross. Webb began in her position last August, and she has either hired or promoted four new department heads since then.

Last August, Marshalltown City Administrator Carol Webb took on her new role at an admittedly fraught time in the community’s history. Her two predecessors, Jessica Kinser and Joe Gaa, had both resigned and accepted payouts to leave their positions within a span of less than a year, and several key staff positions — including fire chief and housing and community development director — remained unfilled as a result.

But Webb, who previously held the same title in Muscatine, saw the vacancies and the impending retirements of other city department heads as a golden opportunity to find and hire the next generation of Marshalltown leaders. Since then, she has promoted longtime MPD Capt. Chris Jones to police chief and former Deputy Fire Chief (and long-term acting chief) Christopher Cross to the fire chief role on a permanent basis, hired former Marshalltown Central Business District (MCBD) Executive Director Deb Millizer as the city’s new housing and community development director (along with assistant director Clayton Ender, filling the role previously known as the city planner position) and hired Jeffrey Evenson as the new Parks and Recreation Director to succeed Geoff Hubbard, who is now working for the city of Johnston.

“We’ve been lucky that we’ve had good candidates applying for positions. We had a couple of internal hires that were ready for the opportunity and already leading in the organization,” Webb said. “So I was very pleased that we had those qualified candidates… I probably couldn’t have ended in a better place.”

As previously mentioned, Cross, Jones and Millizer, who led the MCBD for 5 years, are all familiar faces in the community already, while Evenson most recently worked for the park board in the city of Minneapolis, and Ender comes from Johnston. Although Millizer wasn’t directly working for the city before, she attended most council meetings and frequently collaborated on downtown projects and development initiatives.

“I just love the people, and when this opportunity came up again to apply, I was very excited about it,” she said. “Michelle (Spohnheimer), who had been in the position before, I felt like she just did wonderful work, and it was a little intimidating to follow behind Michelle. She was so great and she was here for so long… (But) I think that we’re just headed in a really great direction. Carol came on, and I feel like she was making good internal hires. And although I wasn’t an internal hire, I kind of feel like that a little bit because I worked so closely with the previous administration and all of the relationships that I have. I just want to see everything continue to propel forward.”

Millizer added that she hopes the city job is one she can retire from, and she praised Public Works Director Heather Thomas and City Clerk Alicia Hunter for their hard work over the last few years along with Webb, who is now her boss. Jones, a Spencer native, has been employed with the MPD throughout his entire 29-year law enforcement career, and he credited previous department heads for their longstanding commitment to the betterment of the Marshalltown community.

“When you get behind those types of initiatives and you’re around positive people trying to do positive things, it makes it very easy to get motivated and stay motivated. We’ve been through quite a bit of turmoil in the past, a variety of it, especially internally at the police department, and the one thing that we’ve been able to do is work together and overcome,” he said. “And those are always the good memories, right? The things that you’re doing collaboratively with other people, and if you’re ever interested in making the most out of your career, I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to work with.”

During a sit down with Webb and the other department heads last week, Cross, who came to Marshalltown as the deputy fire chief back in 2016, was out of town for a funeral, but he later spoke to the T-R about his excitement in taking on the new leadership role, providing insight into the interview process and how it felt to learn he had been selected as the next chief.

“It’s very humbling, number one. It’s really kind of a validation that you’ve been doing something right and that you’ve been able to convey ideas to the board that’s doing the testing process that make sense and that people can get behind,” he said. “You would think that it’s all rainbows and sunshine once you get a leadership position, but once the euphoria of winning the position, it’s not a sinking realization, but (you realize) it’s time for me to go to work because the higher you ascend in an organization, the more rank and responsibility and authority you have… Your workflow kind of multiplies because now, if you’re at the top of the organization, you’re not just working for the operations division or the training division. You’re working for the entire department, and the success or failure of the department kind of hinges upon your vision and the way that you steer the ship.”

Cross added that it has been “satisfying” to see so many of the leadership positions filled at the city, and he believes the new department heads, along with those already in place, are starting to come together and gel as a team.

“I’m excited about this. If you were to write a storyline for a fire chief to have a good council, a good boss in the administrator and then the whole of the citywide department head leadership team, I don’t think you could write it any better than what we have here in Marshalltown,” he said. “I don’t want to say it’s an anomaly, but when you can find yourself in these positions as a fire chief where you have a wonderful structure within which to operate, it’s fantastic.”

Of the newcomers, Evenson, a landscape architect by training, is the only one who is taking on his position without any previous connection to Marshalltown, and he arrives with a strong background in design, construction and project management. Prior to his job in Minneapolis, he worked for the parks and recreation departments in the Twin Cities suburbs of Roseville and Maple Grove.

“Minneapolis was a great job, incredibly well supported parks system, incredible parks system, beat to death, lots of deferred maintenance, but there’s a lot of red tape. Lots of bureaucracy, and it’s just very tough to get things done,” he said. “I was looking for something in a smaller community that I could grab and have an impact on. I’m a seasoned employee, and I want to have an impact. I don’t want to be just kind of going through the motions, and when this job in Marshalltown came open, obviously, you do some research. I’m very impressed with the planning that’s been done and the system plan and the Linn Creek Corridor… I love community engagement, and that’s very important. And I think that that’s certainly on the table of things that we need to do. And the recreation programming is very robust, and I think there are some opportunities out there that we can leverage.”

While doing more with less is always a challenge, Evenson, who started in his job on Monday, Feb. 3, is excited to get to work alongside Recreation Supervisor Jenni Hart. Each of the new leaders is in charge of his or her own department, but they also have opportunities to collaborate and come together — for example, Parks and Rec teamed up with the MPD and MFD to host “Soccer with the Squad” at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum last month.

Additionally, Webb noted, Millizer will be involved in some of the grant projects for the Linn Creek projects — the Apgar Family Water Plaza, the Emerson Bridge, the Ann C. Keyser Trailhead and the renovation of the Martha-Ellen Tye Playhouse at the Marshalltown Arts and Civic Center (MACC).

“It takes a lot of coordination to make all that happen. Plus, we work with the Chamber and the Arts+Culture Alliance on those projects as well,” Webb said. “There are a lot of fingers and hands involved in that, and so ensuring that we’re coordinating everything is really important.”

Webb herself has also taken the lead on the city’s 657A dilapidated buildings and demolition program while she brings Millizer up to speed.

Naturally, because of the nature of what they do and the fact that they share a facility, the MFD and MPD have always enjoyed a strong working relationship. Jones described Cross as “a great person” and said they’re already working on opportunities for both staffs to get together while also building unity with the 911 Communications Commission led by director Rhonda Braudis.

“I think the fact that we’re in the building together has probably brought us closer together in (our) relationship, but Chris and I have had the opportunity to work on a lot of big things since we were deputies, divisional type guys. Our circles crossed or overlapped quite a bit,” Cross said. “Chris befriended me when I first came to the organization eight or nine years ago, and he’s just an outstanding human being (with) his character and the way that he carries himself. He’s been a good friend to me, and I’m so proud of him for what he’s been able to achieve throughout his career and now with this promotion.”

The two Chrises are ready to solve the city’s problems together, and as she looks forward, Webb’s biggest goal is to keep the city in a sound financial position amidst ongoing changes at the state level related to municipal levies. She believes Marshalltown’s strong bond rating and available funds will allow the city to pursue bigger projects such as road reconstruction and the Parks and Rec Master Plan.

“The key there is ongoing operation and maintenance costs, and how do we afford that? And staffing. We’re pretty lean here at the city, so how creative can we get around getting the services delivered with the staff that we have,” she said. “One of my goals is to really look at technology and how we can leverage that. I know at the MPD, we’ve really done a lot of that with the Flock cameras and making our resources go further in the future. So I feel like we have a lot of fun projects that keep me engaged and coming to work every day on the horizon. So it’s exciting to me.”

The first several weeks “flew by” for Millizer, and she felt thankful to inherit the team she did along with bringing in Ender as her assistant. Some of her major goals are creatively addressing nuisance issues, improving the entry points to the community and ensuring that housing and rental inspections are up to snuff.

Jones hopes to build on the strong community relationship, transparency and confidence fostered under his predecessor, Mike Tupper, and Evenson is excited to take on the aforementioned large projects and work with forward thinking staff and leaders. Cross is in the process of filling the deputy chief role he once held while focusing on keeping equipment up to date and exploring the long-term future of fire and EMS, including whether the latter should be considered an essential service, and hoping to increase staffing levels.

“There’s lots of great opportunities for this place, and I don’t want to push the issue. But I do want to make sure that my goals stay in the ears of the council respectfully and appropriately so that we don’t get left behind,” Cross said. “I’m not saying the council has a tendency to leave us behind, but you have to be vocal in where you want to steer your department. But, you know, (my goal is) just making good decisions on behalf of the public and spending money wisely — just playing the game how it’s supposed to be played so that the community has confidence in me as their fire chief but, you know, more broadly, that confidence and security to know that when they have a problem and they call 911, we’re gonna show up and do great things for them to the best of our ability.”