Profile: Hyattsville's Assistant City Administrator Moves On

With several major projects and three solid years behind him, is moving on.

For Jones, who also has served as acting director of the recreation and the arts and the public works departments, and temporarily led the city’s IT charge, the change seemed obvious.

“We just had a major change in our makeup of the council and for me it’s just a natural progression in my career to want to move to the next level,” he said on his last day of work here, June 3. “The mayor who had been the mayor here for several years is no longer here. We have two new faces on the council. Since the organization is just in a time of change [I thought] that it would be a good time to personally move on.”

And move up.

Jones will be serving the City of Seat Pleasant as city administrator, a role that he seems to be suited for.

“I have for a long time wanted to be in the city management profession so the specific move here was career progression,” he said of his tenure in Hyattsville.

Before working on his home turf – Jones grew up in the area – he worked for Evanston, Ill. for four years as an assistant to the city manager.

“My responsibilities there were significant enough that my next move would’ve been either to be city manager somewhere or as an assistant.”

So home he came.

Before Evanston, Jones worked in Orlando as senior aide to their equivalent of a city administrator and as acting director of the streets and sanitation department. Before that it was Orange County, FL in the housing and community development department and before that, Tallahassee, FL as an intern.

Jones’ time in Hyattsville was marked with great change, including turnover in leadership for recreation, public works, treasurer and, most recently, with the departure of and the entrance of to that position.

“I have been in an organization when that happened and it’s not the most calming thing to experience,” Jones said of such a transition. “But here it really wasn’t that way. It was sort of orderly. I think it probably was because former City Administrator Murphy sort of stayed on through the process. I think that was helpful so we didn’t have people sort of worried what would happen.

“I think the fact that they hired another city administrator with a broad array of experiences – I think that’s helped people get through the transition without any major concerns.”

Despite being somewhat in the shadows in Hyattsville, the hallmarks of Jones’ time here are giants.

For him, the re-launch of the city’s website was one that commanded a fair amount of gravity.

“It was a huge project that I was able to work on and I’m proud of it,” he said. “To see how that has really just sort of changed how we communicate with the residents … While we have a really good segment of our residents who use the website … we may have some who it’s still not reaching. It’ll be interesting to see how we move forward.”

Completion of a citywide efficiency study and implementation of a – are two other big things that stand out in Jones’ mind as milestones the city reached under his watch.

He also worked in a human resources capacity by updating the personnel manual, and organizing employee meetings. His work also included helping out with special projects.

“We had I guess a big backup of projects that we wanted to get taken care of,” he said. “I was really focused on getting special projects ticked off the list. So that took a lot of time as well."

Those projects include a new work-in-progress document management.

Despite his vast successes, Jones’ hindsight is 20-20 these days. If there was one thing he could’ve done differently, it would be related to the

“While I think our traffic study was good, I’m not sure we did enough to combat perceptions and misinformation about [it],” he said. “And so you’re not going to win everything so as things go if there was something I could have done differently to help people hopefully realize that we as city employees take seriously the fact that we are spending their taxpayer dollars and [that we] do it wisely.

“There were all sorts of allegations that we were wasting money, that we wanted traffic to come through here like we were a highway and it just wasn’t the case. It wasn’t our intent.”

Until his start date of June 27, Jones plans to spend time with his family, and hopefully get a little R&R time in before he moves into the next phase of his professional life.

“It’s amazing how fast [the past three years] went by,” he said.