Wellman City Administrator to resign next month

Wellman City Administrator Dave Ross has announced he will resign in August. Ross is in Boston at the moment, where he has been taking continuing education classes in municipal administration for two weeks and has one more week left to go. While in Boston, Ross informed the city staff that he would leave his position shortly after his return from Boston on Aug. 1. The council was aware that Ross was looking for another job before he left for Boston.

Ross told the mayor and council that he had accepted the position of ?village administrator? in Mount Horeb, Wis. His last day of work will be Aug. 12. He will begin his job in Mount Horeb one week later. Mount Horeb is a town of about 7,000 people located 15 miles west of Madison, Wis. According to its Chamber of Commerce Web site, the town is the ?Troll Capital of the World.? Wooden carvings of trolls figure prominently on the town?s main drag and a local person even dresses up in a troll costume for special occasions.

In a phone interview Monday, Ross explained why he took the job in Mount Horeb.

?When I came to Wellman, I was looking forward to certain challenges,? said Ross. ?Those same challenges exist in Mount Horeb. I came from a town of 10,000 people, and I?m looking forward to getting back to that size of community.?

Ross said he will miss the friends he has made in his four years as city administrator.

?I had a job offer in Minnesota at the same time I had one in Wellman, and I chose Wellman because of the people,? said Ross. ?City Clerk Donna Wade was one of the most significant reasons I chose Wellman. She was so friendly, and she was representative of the people in general. I found that to be consistent across Washington County.?

Steve Slaubaugh has nearly four years of experience as a city councilor in Wellman. He said Ross worked hard to obtain grants for city projects.

?He?s brought in nice grants to improve our water system that is coming on line in the next week or two,? said Slaubaugh. ?He has achieved grants for various projects in town, such as the infrastructure projects we?re taking on next year.?

In May 2010, Wellman was awarded a $200,000 grant to rehabilitate low-income housing in the town. At that time, Ross noted that the city had great success obtaining grants.

?Wellman has been very fortunate lately when it comes to grants,? said Ross in 2010. ?We?ve received a grant for the reverse osmosis water treatment system and one for the Parkside Activities Center.?

Slaubaugh said Ross?s future employer is acquiring quite an administrator.

?I think Dave has been a tremendous asset for our city,? said Slaubaugh. ?We?ve had a lot of improvements around town, and he has been at the forefront of many of those things. I?m happy for him ? not so happy for us.?

The Wellman City Council will have a special meeting tonight at 7 p.m. at the Wellman Municipal Building. It will discuss Ross?s resignation at that meeting. Slaubaugh said it is too soon to say whether the city will hire an administrator to take Ross?s place.

Wellman Mayor Ryan Miller said he, too, is sad to see Ross go.

?Dave was very good to work with,? said Miller. ?He made my job a lot easier. He did a lot of the little things I did my first year as mayor. The council had a dream list of projects, and Dave did a good job of making those things a reality.?

Ross became Wellman?s city administrator in May 2007. Before Ross?s arrival, the city spent 3 years without a city administrator. Its first city administrator, Chris Ward, worked for the city from 2002 to 2004.

Ross moved to Wellman from Cottonwood, Ariz. He was born in Minnesota but moved to Arizona at the age of three and grew up in the Phoenix area. He worked in law enforcement for 18 years in Arizona. He went back to school to get his bachelor?s and master?s degrees in public administration. Ross was surfing the Internet one day and saw the job opening in Wellman.

Ross told the Journal during an interview in 2007, ?When I applied, we didn?t know much about it. The council invited me out for an in-person interview and my wife came with me. When we got out here, one of the first things we noticed and really struck us was the people. We?re used to closeness and fellowship and everybody being very caring and giving toward each other in our church family, but it is like that everywhere out here. Everywhere you go it is people helping others and being concerned about others.?

Ross is the third city administrator in the county to resign this summer. Washington City Administrator Dave Plyman resigned at the end of May and Riverside City Administrator Tina Thomas resigned at the end of June.