Heath VonEye, the City of Watertown’s public works director and assistant city manager, attended his final Watertown City Council meeting Monday night and took the opportunity to celebrate some of his department’s accomplishments.

Heath VonEye
“It is a very bittersweet decision, having poured 6½ years into everything we’ve been able to accomplish here in Watertown,” he said at the conclusion of the meeting. “We’ve done a lot of transformational things that I feel have left this community in a better place than where it was.”
VonEye resigned last week and has been named deputy city administrator for the City of Harrisburg, S.D., where former Watertown City Manager Amanda Mack is now the city administrator. He begins his new job on Jan. 15. He will earn $195,000 a year at Harrisburg, a suburb of Sioux Falls that is one of the state’s fastest-growing municipalities.
In an email to city staff Monday night, VonEye highlighted some the city’s recent accomplishments.
“There is a lot worthy of celebrating,” he wrote, “too much to list specifically. But generally, we’ve all had a whirlwind of noteworthy successes: public building needs (oh the buildings…), policies, procedures, software, roads (oh the roads…), pathways, bridges, systems, standards, restructuring, contract admin, capital planning, team building, development review process, permitting, transition management, etc.
“However, the current Public Works team that we have built is by far what I would tell anyone to be ‘what I’m most proud of.’”
He said his new position in Harrisburg will focus on aiding in all aspects of city management, while specifically overseeing Engineering and Development Services along with Public Works/Park & Rec and Utilities.
“I’ll be playing a crucial role to help develop and implement strategies, practices, and systems to most effectively aid in their growth management, all in coordination with the metropolitan growth areas around Sioux Falls. I’m excited about the opportunity, essentially performing much of what I’ve gotten to help with in Watertown, perhaps from less of a transitional and more of a “ground up” standpoint.”
VonEye also made light of the fact that the Watertown Current reported on his new job in Harrisburg just a couple of hours after it was approved by the Harrisburg City Council.
“I’m in a little bit of a unique situation here,” he said at the council meeting. “I’ve never had the press write my resignation story before I actually returned back to the community I was leaving. They were a step ahead of me in that regard.
“There’s a request my wife has made: She does want to know if you can wait and let her pick out the curtains in our next house.”