RIVERSIDE

The thank you card sat on Christine Yancey’s desk at Riverside City Hall.

And on a recent December afternoon, just one day before her last day as City Administrator last week, she pulled the card out and began to read.

“Thank you for your services to the Riverside community,” stated the note from a city resident. “Many projects were completed with your assistance. Always appreciated your helpfulness and friendly professional demeanor whenever I called or stopped in. Happy retirement.”

Yancey put the card down and paused.

“That’s why I do this job,” she said, smiling. “I want to make a difference.”

After more than three years as Riverside City Administrator, Yancey announced her retirement from the city two months ago in a letter sent to city council members. Her last day was Dec. 21, finishing a run that began with a major resurfacing project on Highway 22 in summer 2019 and ended with three of the five city council members initially refusing to accept her resignation letter at a meeting in early November.

Eventually, the resignation was accepted, a Washington County consulting firm was hired to begin the search for a new city administrator and Yancey is back home in Mechanicsville and making plans to visit the grandkids in Kansas City.

The retirement itself may not be permanent.

“I’m retiring from here,” Yancey, 65, said. “I am going to retire through the winter, but then I’m going to see what my options are.”

The ride, at times, has been rocky. Literally. When she arrived in Riverside in 2019, just after the annual Trekfest celebration had taken place, construction work had begun on Highway 22, the one road that goes all the way through town on an east-west route. The road was impassable. Traffic was at times backed up almost to Highway 218, a major north-south route that goes to Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. Drivers sought alternate ways to get through town, even going on a walking and running trail south of downtown. One day, a Washington County deputy sheriff was almost hit while running on the trail, Yancey said.

“I came right in the middle of a project that was not going well,” she said.

The resurfacing project, which resulted in a temporary traffic light being installed on Highway 22, eventually got done. A water and sewer main project on Third Street, costing more than $3 million and also resulting in a temporary traffic light on Highway 22, was nearly completed this year. A renovation project at Railroad Park, partially funded by a Washington County Riverboat Foundation grant, was completed this summer. Between all of that, Yancey worked on projects and initiatives to improve the downtown area.

“It (the downtown) was just something that had been neglected for so many years,” Yancey said. “I did let them (city council members) know, this is not going to be an overnight process. This is going to take several years to bring back.”

Yancey is hoping that visible changes to the downtown will start showing up in 2023.

A group of Riverside citizens have bought five downtown buildings. Proposals for grants are beginning to come to the city council. Yancey envisions those buildings housing businesses and apartments.

What is looming in the near horizon is talk of building a community center. Proposed designs for the multi-million dollar facility have already appeared in front of the city council. It is likely that a referendum to get voter approval for the center will be on the November 2023 ballot.

As Yancey leaves town, all these projects are still on her mind. When talking about Riverside, she still uses “we” in a conversation about the town she won’t be residing in. The connection was always there, even if she resided in a Riverside apartment while maintaining a home with her husband in Mechanicsville 55 miles away.

“For the amount of time I’ve been here and the amount of projects we’ve done, and the dollar amount is pretty expensive for a town this size, I have no regrets about taking this position,” Yancey said. “I feel good about what I have accomplished. You get to a certain point where it’s time for them to go to the next phase and do whatever they need to do to be successful.”

While there have been stressful discussions during city council meetings, Yancey has enjoyed the working relationship she developed with Riverside Mayor Allen Schneider.

“We have worked well together,” she said. “We haven’t always agreed, but then that’s a good thing.”

Council Person Edgar McGuire was one of those worried about Yancey’s departure when it was announced in October.

“I have gotten to know Chris over the last couple of years,” he told The News in an email, “and not only is she a wonderful city administrator, but a wonderful person as well. She has gone above and beyond for Riverside and she will be greatly missed! I am grateful to have the opportunity to work with her and wish her the best in her future endeavors.”

In the meantime, Riverside is preparing for a city administrator search that could take months. The target date is May 1 and Brent Hinson of Washington-based Hinson Consulting told the council at its Dec. 5 meeting that the number of candidates is likely to be lower than it was in 2019 and the salary may need to be increased from its current $77,250 because of a competitive job market.

“The sad part is, those that have worked in government as long as I have are getting out of the public sector and we’re taking that knowledge with us into the private sector,” Yancey said. “And so it’s becoming very difficult to find qualified individuals to work in the public sector. Part of that is because of the negative aspects that they have to deal with in the job. It is nationwide.”

When Yancey’s resignation was discussed at the Nov. 7 meeting, some members of the council were hoping she would work into the new year. Yancey said that would depend on cooperation from the entire council, but at the next meeting Yancey closed down the possibility of an extension. The council went into closed session Dec. 19 to finalize Yancey’s severance agreement.

“We were fools not to support you more,” McGuire told Yancey during the council’s open session Nov. 7.

While the search goes on for another city administrator, the council is adding a clerk to help fill in the gaps with City Clerk Becky LaRoche. Schneider, who lives in Riverside and works in Iowa City, is expected to be facing more hours in City Hall.

Based on surveys and other communications Yancey has received from the Iowa League of Cities and National League of Cities, she said the landscape has changed in many locations since the Covid pandemic.

“We had Covid, we were locked down, we did everything electronically and now we don’t know how to communicate,” she said. “We don’t know how to behave ourselves when we’re dealing with people, face to face. We’ve gotten so used to social media, being able to say or do whatever we want without any consequences per se. Something has to give and I’m not sure what it is.”