Doug Reinert starts as Fairfield City Administrator

FAIRFIELD — Fairfield’s city administrator, Doug Reinert, is settling into his new job and his new state.

Reinert is in his third week as the city’s administrator, taking over the position previously held by Aaron Kooiker until his resignation in March to become the city manager in Carroll. Reinert was most recently the parks director for the city of Fort Smith, Arkansas, with a population of about 90,000.

Reinert had been Fort Smith’s parks director for eight years after obtaining his master’s in public administration. He knew someday he would want to take the leap from leading a parks department to leading an entire city, and saw in the spring of 2023 that the time was right. His five children are mostly adults now, with two adult sons, two daughters in college and one daughter in high school.

“My daughters told me, ‘Go do it, Dad. We’re good,’” Reinert said. “I started to look for a job, and my wife was the one who found Fairfield, Iowa.”

Reinert’s wife, Michelle, lived in Davenport at one time, and her father lived in Clinton, so her family was already familiar with Iowa. Reinert said that he liked what he read about Fairfield.

“I can see that Fairfield wants to grow, and I came from a community that is growing like gangbusters, and having those techniques move a city move forward are important,” Reinert said. “Fairfield already has a lot of infrastructure in place to help growth, and it’s very inclusive, with a university. Fairfield is ranked one of the friendliest cities in the nation, and we definitely like that. Everything about Fairfield seemed to fit our family dynamic and our values.”

Since starting his job on June 12, Reinert has been getting up to speed on various city projects, and taking on the responsibilities that were split between City Clerk Rebekah Loper and City Engineer and Public Works Director Melanie Carlson, both of whom performed interim city administrator tasks after Kooiker left. Reinert said some of the things he’s been working on thus far have included preparing for the new fire station, and improving HVAC systems in city buildings such as the library.

Reinert was born and raised in the town of Ellsworth, Kansas, population 3,500. He was an outdoorsy boy who enjoyed hunting and fishing, and expected to following his father into farming. However, his father encouraged him to go into a different line of work. His aunt in Topeka told him about a job opening in the city’s parks department as a maintenance worker, which Reinert took. Reinert discovered he really enjoyed working in a parks department, and that’s what he’s done for most of his career.

Reinert attended Utah State University to study forestry because he wanted to explore the West and to fight forest fires, which he was able to do there, working just over the border in Idaho.

After college, Reinert became the parks supervisor in Hannibal, Missouri, and then in Ottawa, Kansas. While in Ottawa, the town’s city administrator encouraged Reinert to get his master’s in public administration, which Reinert did from the University of Kansas in Lawrence. However, Reinert was not interested in becoming a city administrator right away, because he had young children at the time, and saw that city administrators tended to move around a lot. Instead, he sought a job with more stability, but one where he could learn many of the same skills as a city administrator such as personnel and budget management, and thus started his stint as the parks director at Fort Smith.

Reinert said he’s thoroughly enjoying his new city of Fairfield.

“Everybody here has their act together,” he said. “They’ve done a good job of keeping everything moving forward.”

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com