PV city manager looks back on 20-year career
When James Frizell steps away from his post as Pauls Valley’s city manager at the end of this month it will mark the end of nearly 40 years of service to the City of Pauls Valley. He’s spent 20 of those years in the role of city manager.
“I’ve worked for the City of Pauls Valley for most of my adult life,” said Frizell, who announced his retirement in August of this year. “Obviously, it’s been a good run.”
Originally from the Paoli area, Frizell began his career with the City of Pauls Valley in 1981 as a police officer. He became a detective with the Pauls Valley Police Department in 1989, was appointed assistant chief of police in 1992, and then became chief of police in 1993. He served as police chief until becoming the city manager in the fall of 2001.
While his 20-year tenure as city manager isn’t record-breaking, it is noteworthy, especially for a smaller community, where the average tenure of city managers is typically closer to seven or eight years according to national estimates.
“It is an anomaly. You’re just not going to see city managers spend that much time at one place,” Frizell said. “I think a lot of it is that I’m from this community, and I had a good relationship with the community for a long time.”
But more than that, Frizell said he credits the people he works with for his longevity.
“I wouldn’t have made it this long had it not been for the personnel. You’re only as good as your personnel. All the supervisors, all the people working for you, you’re only as good as they are,” Frizell said. “We have had, and we continue to have, good people working for the city of Pauls Valley.
During his time as city manager, Frizell has had the opportunity to be part of a number of major projects that have improved the city overall. The first was an overhaul of the trash collection system from alley dumpsters to poly-carts, which was already underway when he took the helm in 2001.
“It took about two years to get that all changed over. And it was to the good of the city, getting the trash service to where it is today. It cleaned up the town quite a bit,” Frizell said, adding that the switch resulted in sanitation service accounts shifting from being nearly $200,000 in the red annually to earning $200,000 to $250,000 per year, which had never happened before.
He also helped usher in a new water plant in 2010. The plant was a necessary project that cost more than $10 million and took several years to complete.
“During that time frame we were under a consent order because we weren’t able to meet EPA standards as far as EPA was concerned about the quality of water we had,” Frizell said.
When asked what the hardest part of his job is, he chuckles.
“That’s a good question. The hardest part is you’re always having to deal with DEQ and other regulatory agencies. There are a lot of regulatory things you have to weed through to get things done,” Frizell said.
When he took over as city manager, Frizell said the city was under three consent orders, with the water plant being the main issue. Consent orders are generally issued when the Department of Environmental Quality identifies a problem with items like water, sewer or sanitation that need correction.
“As I leave here, we’re only under one, that’s the construction and demolition landfill site, and we’re trying to get it fixed,” Frizell said. “The fact that we’ve had very few consent orders over the last 17 or 18 years has been really good.”
Perhaps one of the biggest achievements for the City of Pausl Valley during Frizell’s tenure was securing a grant from the Reynolds Foundation to build the Donald W. Reynolds Recreation Center in Wacker Park. The recreation center opened in 2014.
Of course, there have also been plenty of hard knocks for Frizell as city manager. The most notable he said was the closure of the Pauls Valley hospital in 2018.
“There’s always going to be regrets. The biggest regret, for me, is what transpired with the hospital. There’s a lot of water under the bridge there,” Frizell said. “I will say this, from city council to our office here, we did all we could do to keep the hospital open, and it just finally failed. It’s one of the biggest tragedies of my tenure.”
More recently, COVID-19 provided challenges for the city last year as pandemic lockdowns affected the economy.
“That was one of the toughest stretches, financially, that the city of Pauls Valley has ever had. We’ve always had hiccups, you know, but that was one of the worst. It’s the only time in my tenure that we had to furlough employees because we were so far down,” Frizell said. “But we held together as a community, and we got through it.”
Pauls Valley’s City Council has not named a replacement for Frizell yet, but they have begun interviewing candidates. It’s unclear whether the position will be filled before his departure.
Frizell said while he will miss the community and the people he works with, he doesn’t anticipate missing the demands of the job.
“There’s a lot of stress. You lay awake at night not being able to sleep, wondering what’s going to happen,” Frizell said.
As for what he’ll be doing next, Frizell said, “NOTHING. I’m going to do nothing for four or five months. Then from there we’ll just see where it goes.”
