Bertagna keeps 'all systems go'

Paul Bertagna's passion for his job is hard to miss.

It's not just that he puts in long hours making sure that the key systems of the City of Sisters keep working day and night. The public works director really loves what he does and - even more - where he does it.

"I love Sisters," he told The Nugget last week. "I love the community as a whole. I love the opportunities for our children. I love the school district. In my position, the thing I love most is being able to help that, to make it better. Working with the school district is one of my favorite parts of the job."

Bertagna noted that, with new leadership, lines of demarcation between various local agencies are less sharp. There is a sense of a need to work together for the broader benefit of the community. And the public-works department is keen to pull its weight.

"Andrew (Gorayeb, city manager) and I talk about it," Bertagna said. "We want to be the hardest-working public agency in Sisters. It's competitive. You have to get up early to beat Jim Golden (schools superintendent) to work."

Bertagna came to the City of Sisters at a watershed moment. He had been working for a private utility company in Bend and had completed education in project management when he came on-board as the wastewater operator for a brand-new sewer system.

On his first day, then-mayor Steve Wilson looked at him and said, "Hang on for the ride." And how right he was.

The sewer system allowed new kinds of development in Sisters, and the in-town population grew from 911 to 1,470 in two years. Developers were splitting up properties into smaller and smaller lots, and new hook-ups were coming fast and furious.

"That was a wild time," Bertagna said.

Things have never been settled for the public works department. For a long time, there was an almost fevered pace of development. Then the recession tightened its grip and there was virtually no development. Now, Bertagna sees things stabilizing.

Bertagna became the city's project coordinator in 2005, and took the reins as public works director in 2011.

He sees his biggest challenge in the position being the desire to hit his own high standards of service in the face of increasing regulatory requirements.

That involves protecting what Bertagna considers the city's most valuable and important resource: Water.

"We're watching the City of Bend in a dogfight right now over a resource they've been using forever," he said.

In the considered opinion of the public works director, Sisters has "the best damn water in the world - and I'm not afraid to say that."

Making sure it stays that way - and that there is enough of it in the future - is a constant preoccupation for Bertagna.

"We're constantly looking out into the future," he said. "We've got to do that work now."

That work involves preparing for a second water reservoir and redundancy in the vulnerable waterline that feeds from the reservoir down to Sisters.

Working with regulatory agencies and to secure the city's water-rights position is labor that is not visible to the public, or even to most folks at City Hall, but it is every bit as critical as making sure the wells are pumping and that lines are sound.

Bertagna notes that Sisters now has water rights for 4.6 million gallons a day.

"Two years ago, we had 2.2," Bertagna said. "We've got water for the future, but we've got to be constantly creative. If everything works right, we're going to grow. There's never going to be more water. There's going to be less and less and harder to get."

And quality is always the most important factor.

"I don't ever want to deal with a water-quality issue."

Bertagna likes the proactive attitude at City Hall, a willingness to get at the core of problems.

"The attitude with the new leadership is, let's go talk to people. Let's fix it. I hear that from Andrew every day: Let's fix it."

As is the case for everyone in his crew, Bertagna's job is full of variety - "Installing public art? Never thought I'd be doing that." And he's got to do a lot of planning. Some of that is for emergency response. He noted the recent floods in Colorado and the devastating effect they had on communities. He wants to make sure Sisters is ready.

"That's something we're constantly looking at," he said. "Are we geared up, and if we're not, how can we get geared up fast."

That's the kind of thing you pay attention to when you love your work and the community you do it in.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

• Email: editor@nuggetnews.com
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