A drop-in was held yesterday afternoon at the Laurens Commission of Public Works (CPW) celebrating the career of General Manager Dale Satterfield, who retires today. Satterfield told us he never dreamed he would have had such a long tenure with the CPW. “…and really be the only full time job that I’ve had. I came to work here full time in 1982 and to be here 32 years full time is just a blessing. and… it’s been a blessing serving the people.”
The Commission recently named Assistant General Manager John Young to replace Dale Satterfield at General Manager. We asked Dale about the CPW promoting present employees to fill management positions. “We have a plan in place to try to train and gain experience with our employees in-house, especially in the leadership positions. And that’s the best way to do it, because they have strong ties here, they live here, they love the community, they love the people they serve. We think that is just very beneficial to the community.”
We asked about the challenges ahead in operating a public utility. “The big challenge is a lot of the regulatory issues that will be coming down and trying to deal with those regulatory issues and compliances without trying to raise the rates and pay for those. It’s a goal of ours every day to provide the service at least cost as we can and try to find those ways to be efficient and it will be no different in the future.”
What about a highlight of his career with the CPW? “If I could name one highlight, we had a couple of studies done of our organization early in my career as General Manager and both of those studies revealed that we were working as efficiently as we could with the number of employees that we had. Some of the comments in those studies what that it was a well-managed organization. So that was a highlight for me.”
Former CPW General Managers Coleman Smoak and Sam Wallace were on hand for yesterday’s reception for Dale Satterfield, along with new General Manager John Young.
Today is Dale Satterfield’s final day as General Manager of the Laurens CPW. He’s joining the City of Clinton to become their Public Works Director following a retirement there this spring.
