At its Tuesday meeting, Heber City approved a new city engineer and a new contract for its city manager of three years.
Heber City manager Matt Brower started working for the city in 2018, early in Mayor Potter’s current term. She says she appreciates the expertise he’s brought to the table.
“Matt has vast experience in different cities throughout the country. He is an incredibly hard worker. He’s dedicated, he’s smart. He’s very well liked. He’s able to communicate clearly and efficiently, and I feel like it has raised the bar for the kind of service and the kind of work that we do as a city.”
The council voted unanimously to renew his contract for the maximum of three years. Potter says one change was to offer Brower more severance pay in the new contract in case he’s fired without cause.
“So, if he is let go without cause, it would give him time to find another job, since city manager jobs are not as abundant as others, since you can only have one per city or fewer, so that was the thinking behind that.”
She also says in the past three years, Brower has used his experience from elsewhere to make the workload easier on city staff, especially amid Heber’s recent rapid growth, and he’s strengthened relationships with other local government agencies.
She credits him for the city’s ability to create a new general plan along with other important directives.
Heber City engineer Bart Mumford is retiring from his job at the end of September. On Tuesday, the council officially chose assistant city engineer Russell Funk to take over for Mumford.
Funk started working as assistant city engineer six years ago. The mayor says she and other officials selected him for his dedication and ability to bring forth good ideas.
“We are fully confident that he’s going to bring our engineering department to the next level, and we’re really grateful to have him as the next city engineer.”
The city personnel policy allows for internal applicants to get first consideration for some openings. As the only member of the engineering department staying through the next couple of months, Funk was the only candidate considered.
Potter says she and her colleagues who interviewed Funk were particularly confident in his ability to bring in new staff effectively.
The mayor also thanked Mumford for his tenure of 21 years with Heber City Engineering.
“Bart has been phenomenal. He’s been with the city for a long, long time, and he has just been such a rock and has been a gift to the city. Anyway, we’re just grateful for the service that Bart’s given us and excited to have Russ on board.”
