Roxanne Holland takes over from retiring Public Works director

Sedona Public Works Director Kurt Harris‘ last day was Wednesday, July 1, after handing over the city’s infrastructure keys to current Director of Wastewater Roxanne Holland, who will jointly leading both departments.

“I hope that I left the Public Works and the city in a better position, being more robust and more resilient,” Harris said. “I hope that’s one of my signature notes, developing relationships of trust and expertise.”

A licensed professional engineer, Harris, 63, came to Sedona in 2022 after years moving from private consulting in 2010 to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and Arizona Department of Transportation, with which he managed large infrastructure budgets and projects.

“While employed at ADOT, he was responsible for over $18 million in annual operations and over $52 million in construction budgets,” the city stated in May 2023 when announcing his promotion to director. “Harris was born and raised in Mesa and escaped the Valley of the Sun for Flagstaff in 2000. Harris has a bachelor’s in geological engineering from University of Arizona.”

Harris said combining the Wastewater and Public Works departments should ease pressure to add staff, since the consolidated operation can cover its own round-the-clock callouts without new hires.

The merger “was a long time coming,” Harris said, but it was spurred by his retirement.

“I would expect that we wouldn’t have to hire as many people, because we already have that capacity,” he said. “We’ve been doing this over the years through our inspection services and construction work, 24/7. We have to go out and mark our sewer lines, just like Arizona Water has to mark their water lines. So now we have more people who can backfill for a callout when there’s a line break in the middle of the night and we need someone to go out and mark utilities.”

Harris said he plans to stick around Flagstaff but travel the American West with Julie, his wife of 32 years and the mother of his two sons, Carter, 28, an electrical engineer in Boston, and Able, 26, a third-year student at the University of Arizona medical school.

He first knew Julie in first grade, when her older brother Jeff was his best friend. Harris’ earliest memory of her came after he rode a horse to Jeff’s house. She was trailing the two boys, peppering Harris with questions about who he was.

“The same girl for 32 years, she has not shot or stabbed me,” Harris said. “I think the secret is just giving each other room to be who we are and being accepting, because we grew old together. And then you realize that the absence makes the heart grow fonder … need to let her go. For instance, she [recently caught] a plane to France to go on a mountain biking camping trip on her own.”

“She’s a teacher, so she’ll have three months to travel with me,” Harris said. “I’m an active whitewater rafter, kayaker and bowhunter, so I hope to pursue that until I get … bored, and then I plan to volunteer. I have all this experience in sanitation systems, drilling, wells, potable water, so I’ll volunteer for nonprofits and go do improvements around the world through, like, United Methodist Christians Relief.”

Harris’ replacement, Holland, said she does not plan sweeping changes, instead continuing the priorities the city already has in place and keeping approved projects moving.

A Northern Arizona University civil engineering graduate, she has worked for the city since 2012, managing its wastewater capital projects before being named to run the wastewater reclamation plant in 2017.

“I already established that trust with the community with my work at wastewater, and I just intend to continue building those relationships now on the public works side of things as well,” Holland said.

Jon Ebers has also been promoted from assistant city engineer to assistant public works director and will take leadership of Sedona in Motion — the city’s transportation master plan — and coordinate with the Verde Valley Transportation Planning Organization on a regional plan due to be drafted this fall and finalized over the winter.

The SMI roadway projects Ebers inherits will have to move forward without the state appropriation for the city, as House Bill 2201‘s request for $8,025,600 toward the State Route 89A roundabout and Ranger Road extension and House Bill 2609‘s request for $5,016,000 toward the roundabout both came up empty this legislative session.

“It turns out no monies were available for any district priorities when the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, JLBC … came up with the final numbers before the final negotiation of the budget,” Arizona Rep. Selina Bliss [R-District 1] said. “It looked like revenues were not enough compared to expenditures to fund any district priorities. We had already committed to State Route 347 … from Phoenix to Maricopa as the state’s priority, so that took precedent from prior years funding. So, in this case, nobody got nothing … Since I sit on transportation, we heard a lot of bills … there was a lot of needs throughout Arizona, but none of them got funded this year around.”

“We need to really galvanize as a community,” Harris said is his parting message. “Instead of division focus on unity, and that I’ve always been a mantra of it’s very easy to criticize, it’s very hard to find good and positive and focus on uniting people. We all have differences, but we need to focus on the commonality. And my big thing is humankind.”