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- Unsung Heroes
Friday, April 19, 2024
You couldn’t have a beautiful City like Southlake without the breathtaking parks within our green and vibrant city.
Our Parks Crews rise early in the morning to take on the task of keeping our parks in pristine condition. As the sun rises, our park crews are already on site, ready to beat the summer heat. Collectively our teams are responsible for city-wide beautification, contract management, field maintenance, facility utilization agreements, event support, and working with our Athletic Associations.
These oases of greenery provide us with a much-needed respite from our daily lives and contribute to our physical and mental well-being. Behind the scenes, an often-overlooked group of individuals works tirelessly to ensure our parks are meticulously maintained, safe, and inviting for everyone to enjoy.
Our parks crew, through their unwavering dedication and tireless efforts, enhance the quality of life in our communities. They transform ordinary green spaces into extraordinary sanctuaries, creating a haven for all to enjoy. It is time we recognize and celebrate these unsung heroes, expressing our heartfelt gratitude for their hard work, commitment, and invaluable contributions.
In Celebration of Parks and Recreation Month, we want to highlight these hard workers in many ways. On Instagram and Facebook @experiencesouthlake, you can see a beautiful collage of all the Southlake parks. You can also find an exclusive interview with Terry Lee, one of our world-class Parks Supervisors, to learn all the behind-the-scenes details of all the work that goes into our parks.
Happy Park and Recreation Month to those who keep our public parks green, clean, and safe!
Governments are well-known for generating piles of paperwork and maintaining thousands of records and public documents. This results in a mountain of information that someone must organize and properly manage. Fortunately for Southlake, Deputy City Secretary Veronica Lomas has stepped up to the challenge and keeps the document management program moving forward, no matter how difficult the terrain.
Veronica is responsible for managing a system to capture, track, store, and dispose of records. Each record has a life cycle, from creation to active document, to disposition. Working to ensure that Southlake is compliant with state law by meeting retention requirements, Veronica and department liaisons have the challenge of ensuring that paper and electronic documents are maintained efficiently and correctly secured.
“Since coming to Southlake, Veronica has worked with city departments on important projects to better manage documents,” said City Secretary Amy Shelley. “Her leadership to maximizing the use of Laserfiche has resulted in many of the city’s business functions becoming paperless, and great efficiency has been achieved. She is working hard to reduce manual tasks and improve our interaction with citizens.”
An example of a successful project includes digitization of a complex human resource process, open enrollment. Working with HR Business Partner Dylan Welch, efficiencies were gained as follows:
Open enrollment is only one successful project. Other work has included digitizing the public safety personal history statements process, improving the City’s board and commission appointment process, vendor performance evaluations, and recreation incident reports.
Veronica and departmental partners have won awards and been recognized for their work by the DocuNav/Laserfiche User Group. This is because the Southlake team is viewed as role models for innovation and the documentable efficiency gains.
Veronica is fond of saying, “It takes a village” to achieve success, a humble expression of her commitment to work with city departments. And always optimistic, she sees plenty of
opportunity for the future – additional automated business processes, increased digitization, more efficient records management, reduced need for records storage, and better transparency.
When it comes to managing documents, Veronica’s know-how, commitment, and ability to work with others ensures that city business processes can be transformed into a successful digital experience.
Like the Little Engine that Could, Veronica just keeps chugging along, making progress day-by-day, driving innovation and efficiency all along the way. For her exceptional work, she is recognized as one of the City’s Unsung Heroes.
For almost 20 years thousands of people have descended on Town Square to enjoy a family-fun, patriotic event, complete with food, music, and fireworks. The annual event is one of the largest coordinated by the City and requires the good work of numerous employees and volunteers to ensure it is fun and safe for everyone.
The exciting aspects of the event can overshadow the very important, behind-the-scenes work of some of Southlake’s most dedicated employees who provide non-public safety traffic control and staff the street barricades.
“It would be impossible to host Stars & Stripes without our park, recreation and public works employees who are stationed at important locations within the environment,” said Chris Tribble, Director of Community Services. “They are the unsung heroes of the event. We literally couldn’t do it without them.”
Working in the sweltering heat is a challenge, but turning someone away on a closed street can lead to some unpleasant encounters. The team is more than equipped to handle anything that may come up, professionally and positively.
“All of our employees do a great job ensuring that we have a super event for Independence Day, but some don’t get to do the exciting work,” said City Manager Shana Yelverton. “We’re very appreciative of those who help out in any way needed.”
For their Stars & Stripes work that may go unnoticed, members of Parks and Recreation (Community Services), Public Works and Planning & Development Services Departments have been selected as this quarter’s unsung heroes. A big thank you to them all!
Most days you will find Vickie DeWees processing paperwork in her cubicle in Town Hall, ensuring that payments are made accurately and timely for the goods and services purchased by the City.
With over 7,000 payments processed during a fiscal year, this is no small job, but Vickie manages it all with a sense of urgency and efficiency, a strong commitment to customer service and, most days, a dash of humor. Her ready smile and hearty laughter are clearly one of the reasons it’s so much fun to work in Finance Administration.
But in late November, early December, Vickie transforms into an organizational leader, directing a City holiday service project with conviction and military precision.
For more than 15 years, Vickie has organized a voluntary food and gift drive through Christmas Providers, a non-profit organization that facilitates an “adopt-a-family” program. Vickie is the liaison to the organization, coordinates staff volunteers to purchase and wrap gifts and collect food items, shops for needed items, and coordinates with the selected family. For the past several years, the City of Southlake staff has adopted at least two of the larger families in need due to the generosity of staff throughout the organization.
Vickie’s work has inspired other departments to adopt additional families through Christmas Providers as well. The Community Services, Planning & Development Services, and Public Works Departments are now adopting families through the program, largely due to the inspiration that Vickie has provided.
And, if that were not enough, Vickie personally adopts a family! Christmas Providers is fortunate to work with such a giving and kind volunteer. (Note: Vickie also generously gives to charitable programs sponsored by her church, and on holidays might be found handing out needed items to the homeless. Her kindness really knows no bounds.)
For her steady and efficient work as the City’s Accounts Payable Clerk, the leadership she provides for our voluntary service project, and her wonderful attitude, Vickie has been selected as one of the City’s important unsung heroes.
He may not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but he can certainly keep them efficiently-maintained, clean and functional. Kurt Ackermann ensures that everything with the City’s physical plant is well cared for and runs smoothly, protecting the significant public investment in office buildings, public safety stations, parking garages, and other municipal facilities.
With over 800,000 square feet of facilities to manage today, and 80,000 more coming when The Marq-Champions Club opens next year, Ackermann and his team have a big responsibility. Fortunately, his technical experience and customer service mindset are conducive to first-rate work.
“I’ve worked with Kurt on a number of projects,” said Assistant City Manager Ben Thatcher. “In every case he has energetically worked to get the job done quickly and to a quality standard expected. You can count on him to see a project to its conclusion with a smile and a great attitude, even while handling ongoing responsibilities.”
Public Works Director, Rob Cohen agrees. “He’s really an outstanding employee,” said Cohen. “Kurt is always on the go, competently managing a variety of projects and tasks at any given moment. He continually provides great service, and manages timely execution while minimizing impact to staff productivity. I also appreciate the way he keeps a keen eye on the bottom line.”
Ackermann began working with the City of Southlake in January 2012. Since then, he has led his team to:
“In spite of a heavy work load, Kurt always displays a positive attitude, remains flexible, and responds quickly,” said Cohen. “He does these things with little to no fanfare, going about his day-to-day business with a focus on doing a great job for the City of
Southlake.”
Although Kurt Ackermann’s work is doesn’t always attract public attention, it is vital to City operations. For his outstanding performance, exceptional attitude, and modest demeanor, Kurt Ackermann has been selected as one of the City’s important unsung heroes.