City of Eden Prairie Blogs

It took me awhile, but I was finally able to negotiate the necessary permission to profile one more member of the City’s administrative professionals staff as part of my blog tribute to recognize the contribution that administrative professionals make to city government here in Eden Prairie. So, filed under the headline of “last, but certainly not least”, let me introduce you to Lorene McWaters. (That’s her peeking out over the top of her cube.)

Lorene is the Executive Assistant to the City Manager. That’s right. Lorene works with me. She has worked for the City for just over six years, the last four directly with me. Every day. Day after day. Before coming to work for the City of Eden Prairie, Lorene was a research assistant for a market research company called Customer Research, Inc. She worked on their Coca Cola market research team.

Aside from the joy of working for the City Manager (just kidding Lorene), Lorene told me that the favorite part of her job was the fact that she can know what’s going on in her town. Lorene pays attention to public affairs. She likes to know what’s happening in Eden Prairie too.

Aside from the challenges of working for the City Manager (this time I’m not kidding), Lorene told me that the most challenging part of her job is the negativity that raises its head from time to time in the local political atmosphere. I’d second that challenge myself.

In November 2005 Lorene earned her membership into the City’s Community Emergency Preparedness Team (CERT). As a CERT member, Lorene learned how to assist the City’s emergency responses teams in her neighborhood.

In addition to preparing for emergencies, Lorene also cares for her daughter Sonja (10) and her two dogs Copper (12) and Scruffy (6), and her hamster Fred (age unknown).

I work closer with Lorene than perhaps any other employee in city government. She provides attention to the various details I skip over throughout my day. I owe alot to her for the good things that I’ve been able to accomplish since I’ve worked her.

Thanks Lorene. I hope that you had a happy Administrative Professionals’ Week.

City Manager Scott Neal and I launched the city’s podcast today.

Topics covered:

• The World Cup
• The Mayor's trip to China
• Recognizing administrative assistants

Click play to listen (8 min, 20 sec).

Subscribe to the podcast.

Subscribe with iTunes (coming soon).

This is my final profile this week of the members of the City’s administrative professional staff.  I don’t have enough days this week to profile them all.  I picked five of them that I think are representative of the entire group.  Today’s profile subject:  Police Department customer service assistant Carri Haberle.

Carri works the front customer service counter in our Police Department.  Carri has worked for the City for five years.  Prior to coming to work for us, she was an International Communications Specialist for National Car Rental (NCR) in Bloomington.

Carri told me that the “variety” of working in the Police Department is what she likes best about her job.  She must frequently serve people that have committed crimes or have been the victim of crimes.  She says this experience has made her appreciate her relatively normal life more and has made her more compassionate towards people who have suffered a bad turn in life. 

When I asked her about the challenges of her job, Carri said frequently falls back on the skills she developed at her previous job at NCR to work with callers with limited English language skills.

When Carri is not at work, she likes to go walking and spend times in local parks.  She is also an admitted avid shoe shopper.

 In an organization like ours - a city government - can implement all the technology it wants, but we must provide human beings here in our offices for our residents to connect with when they contact us.  We are blessed here with an exceptional group of talented administrative professionals throughout our City departments.  I appreciate their work and feel fortunate to have them on our team.

This is Katie Carleton.  Her computer is booted up and she's getting her telephone headset on and ready to take calls again, ten seconds after walking in the door from her lunch break.  Katie is our front counter reception person at the Eden Prairie Senior Center.  I'm profiling Katie today in my continuing series to recognize the contributions to our organization made by our administrative professionals during Administrative Professional's Week.

Katie has worked for the City for almost one year.  It'll be a year in June.  Before joining the City she worked as an assistant account executive at Momentum Marketing.  She worked in the food services areas with such clients at Schwans and General Mills.

When I asked Katie what her favorite part of her job is, her answer was quick and succinct:  "The People".  She enjoys being part of the events at the Senior Center.  She said it has changed the way she thinks about her future.  She told me that she now looks forward to being retired someday.

Her biggest challenge at the Senior Center is balancing the available resources with keeping her customers happy, which is a tough challenge for all of us working in city government.

In her free time, Katie likes to hike the North Shore with her husband Phil.  She likes to ride horses on the weekend and also work inn her garden.  Katie has a 14 month old son named Ivan.  She said he likes to garden too.

Here's to Katie and the exceptional work she's doing at the Senior Center.  Hang in there Katie.  You've got a few years until retirement.

This is the service counter at the Eden Prairie Community Center.  And right behind that counter is the smiling face of Ikram Ibrahim.  I want you to meet Ikram today in my third installment in a series of profiles I'm writing this week about the City's administrative professionals during Administrative Professional's Week.

Ikram has been with the City for 17 months.  She is the front counter customer service person at the Community Center.  She works there from 5:30 am - 2:00 p.m. Monday through Friday.  It's Ikram's job to get in early in the morning and help get the place opened up for our early morning customers. Before joining our team, Ikram worked for TCF Bank here in Eden Prairie.

When I asked Ikram what she liked best about her job she told me that it was the fact that she is dealing with "different people every minute of her working day".  She likes the variety of her job. 

Ikram says her biggest challenge is making sure the Community Center is up and running by the time that customers are ready to workout in the morning.  She knows that a good morning workout is important to our customers and she doesn't want to let them down.

One of Ikram's favorite things to do outside of work is to ice skate.  She learned to skate since she started working at the Community Center, and now she's pretty good.  She also volunteers her time working for Somali Family Services here in Eden Prairie.

Ikram won the City's "Carl J. Jullie award for Excellence in Customer Service" this year.  Her customer service skills are very good in an environment that is not all that conducive to providing customer service.  Stop by and see her sometime.  You'll see what I mean.

That's Wendy Schmitz at our main reception desk here in Eden Prairie City Center.  Wendy is not the only administrative professional to work the front desk, but she probably works more hours at this front desk than anyone else that works here.

Wendy has worked for the City for 18 years.  She started working for the City by working our 2-10 pm shift at the reception desk at the Community Center.  She worked in Human Resources for a few years and then started working the front desk about three years ago.  Prior to working for the City, Wendy worked in the mortgage banking field.

When I asked Wendy what she liked about her job, she said "I love my job!"  She likes her interaction with residents at the counter.  She likes working with her co-workers.  She said the most satisfying part of her job is when she can answer a citizen's question directly over the telephone without having to forward the call to another City employee. 

Outside of work, Wendy likes to spend time with her son Adam, 13, her daughter Rachel, 7, and her husband Charlie.

Wendy does a very nice job fielding a very wide variety of questions, day in and day out, at our main City Center reception desk.  Next time you call our main line at 952.949.8300, say 'hello' to Wendy.  If you've got a question, she can help.  

A year ago our Fire Department decided to conduct all recuit training in-house, we worked out an arrangement with Hennepin Technical College and got trained in the delivery of their top flight curriculum.  The first class went very well.  Rather than rest on our laurels we decided to approach two of our regular mutual aid partners to see if they would like to join in with us.  Both the Bloomington and Edina Fire Departments signed on.

 This year’s training program is well underway as it reaches the mid-point of the schedule.  Lieutenants, Captains and Chief Officers from each department take turns teaching this year’s group of 20 recruits.  By spreading the program across three departments we get a better size class to teach and also spread the teaching workload over a broader group.

Last night I was part of a team of 8 officers from all three departments that taught the hands-on portion of fire suppression techniques.  We even had a guest instructor, Fire Chief Luke Stemmer from St. Louis Park. 

Judging by the smiles on the faces of the recruits and the instructors, the training went very well.  Many important lessons were learned in the safe confines of our world class training facility.  These are lessons that can mean the difference between a safe experience on a real fire scene or one that potentially ends with injury. 

There are many benefits to our joint training program, one of the long-lasting benefits will be the familiarity that these recruits will always have with one another.  As they move up the ranks in their respective department’s these new people will have contacts that will last them a lifetime and keep our three departments connected for the long haul.  Operating in concert at a large scale event doesn’t happen by accident, this kind of initiative is just one example of how we keep the cohesiveness moving forward.

Without first-rate mutual aid partners and an exceptional facility this program never happens.  Thank you to everyone involved!

It’s Administrative Professional’s Week this week.  To recognize the many administrative professionals that work for the City of Eden Prairie, I thought that I would profile five of them this week.  One each day.  Today, Monday, April 24, we’ll start with Mary Zilka.                                             

Mary Zilka is the Administrative Assistant in the Community Development Department.  That's her working at her desk in the photo above getting ready for a busy Monday morning. She works with our planners, assessors, economic developers, housing people, and human services employees.  Mary’s work station is right behind the Community Development service counter so she has lots of public contact. 

Mary has worked for the City for 18 months.  It’ll be two years in September.  Before joining us, Mary worked for the Eden Prairie School District for eight years.  We’ve hired a couple of administrative professionals from the School District.  They’re pretty good employees.

Mary told me that the favorite part of her job is that she always learns something new every day.  She admits that she did not know much about the workings of city government before working here, but finds the work interesting and enjoyable.

Her greatest challenges are working on projects at her desk while at the same time trying to provide good customer service to residents who come to the service counter with questions.  She also said it’s challenging to set up the City’s “Meet & Greet” visits because she is often juggling the personal schedules of 4-5 people simultaneously trying to find a date and a time for the Mayor, our Economic Development Manager David Lindahl, and me to pay our visits to local businesses.  It’s a tough duty, but she does a good job doing it.

Out side of work Mary likes to hang out with her dogs, and her friends.  She likes to read and watch movies.  She loves to cook.

We’re fortunate to have people like Mary Zilka as one of our administrative professionals here at the City of Eden Prairie.  Check out more profiles of our administrative staff right here in this blog this week.

I attended the annual Community Education Partnership Breakfast this morning at St. Andrews Lutheran Church.  The partnership breakfast is organized each year by the Eden Prairie School District's Community Education Services division in order to bring together leaders from around the community to discuss an issue of community concern.  This year's community issues is racism.  The title of this year's event was "Diversity in Eden Prairie:  Join a Courageous Conversation on Race".

The School District's Nanette Missaghi (pictured at the microphone) moderated a panel of Eden Prairie residents who shared their individual experiences with diversity in Eden Prairie.  The panel included Richard Liu, Gail Toatley, Harry Moran, Abdullahi Hassan and our very own Recreation Division Manager Laurie Obiazor.

The stories from the panel were touching and insightful about what it's like to experience diveristy in Eden Prairie.  You really can't complete a "courageous conversation about race" within the 90 minuntes we had at the meeting this morning, but you can get one started.  I hope we can keep it going throughout the year.

Later this afternoon, I snapped some photos of the most vibrant rainbow that I've seen in a long time.  It had the appeared in the eastern sky over Eden Prairie.  All right, I know it was probably not anywhere near Eden Prairie, but it sure looked like it.  It was beautiful sight.  It was a nice way to end the day.

Yesterday afternoon was the official groundbreaking for our new fire station to be located in southwest Eden Prairie.  Yesterday’s event marked the end of a two year process to identify and acquire a suitable site and then design a building that met our current and future needs all the while staying within budget.    I have been fortunate to have a supportive group of people behind this project all the way.  The support, of course, begins with the citizens of the fine city.  Next is the support of all of our City Council members, followed by Scott Neal our City Manager.  Last but not least has been the support and input from the members of the fire department.  I would especially like to recognize the efforts of the building committee members: Rod Uting, Roger Anderson, Ward Parker, Tim Peltier, Fred Ziebol, Chuck Siebert and Rick Hammerschmidt.  These seven people worked tirelessly to bring the design process to a successful conclusion.

Now the “fun” part begins, the actual construction process.  Our General Contractor, CM Construction is set to begin moving equipment onto the site on Monday April 24th.  Construction is expected to be completed by this time next year.  With the location of this fire station our ability to serve the residents of southwest Eden Prairie will be greatly enhanced.  Additionally we will be able to provide a faster response to mutual aid requests from our frequent mutual aid partner Chanhassen Fire.  Once highway 312 is completed through the city of Chaska or two cities will be only about 6 minutes apart and we will be able to utilize each other for timely mutual aid support as well.

Our final piece to the whole puzzle is the ongoing process of recruiting great people to join our volunteer ranks.  We are currently kicking off a new recruiting process with the goal of getting closer to our newly authorized strength of 95.  If you or somebody you know is interested in joining please contact me or visit our website for more information.

From left to right: Building Committee Members-Rod Uting, Ward Parker, Tim Peltier, Roger Anderson and Rick Hammerschmidt.  To my right, Mayor Tyra-Lukens, Councilmember Ron Case, Councilmember Phil Young, Councilmember Brad Aho and City Manager Scott Neal.