Chehalis Public Works Director Retires After 37 Years

Chehalis Public Works Director Rick Sahlin started a countdown clock on his phone about six months before his scheduled date of retirement. He kept one going on the whiteboard in his office, too.

Sahlin wiped the board clean on Friday after more than 37 years spent working for the City of Chehalis. Come Monday morning, his chair will be occupied by Community Development Director Trent Lougheed, who has spent the past year preparing for the change.

Sitting in his office Thursday afternoon, Sahlin marveled at having seen the countdown on his phone change from days to just hours left remaining in his career. He first began working for the city in February of 1982, when he took what was supposed to be a temporary job hosing down basins and spreading liquid sludge from the wastewater treatment plant onto agricultural fields.

“My job prior to coming here was building houses with a local contractor,” Sahlin said. “When interest rates jumped in the early 1980s, that market shut down. My initial plan was to work here for a couple years and go back to pounding nails, but once you get into it, the vacation days start stacking up and the longer you stay somewhere, the harder it is to leave.”

Sahlin began climbing the public works ladder when he transitioned from reading meters to working on the water distribution crew in 1986. Six years later, he took the job of maintaining signage and street lights in Chehalis. He became the city street and stormwater superintendent in 2007 and twice held the public works director position on an interim basis before officially taking the position in 2014.

Having grown up in Chehalis and being on the front lines for numerous events that have shaped the city, including five major flood events, proved beneficial to not only Sahlin’s own department but others within the city government.

“I remember when Rick first came to public works,” Chehalis Mayor Dennis Dawes said. Dawes and City Manager Jill Anderson presented Sahlin with an official proclamation thanking him for his decades of service during a city council meeting on June 10. 

“I was working for the police department,” Dawes said. “He had worked up from being a temporary guy to be the sign technician when I retired, and that was 15 years ago. … It’s always good to have a historical perspective on things. You know the area, you know the people and you know what to expect when things need to be done in town. It’s just hard to get that level of knowledge of a city.”

Each of the major floods that Sahlin has responded to evolved in different fashions, he said. The approach to the aftermath is largely the same, even with a flood the size of the one in 2007, but initial responses are always different.

Since that catastrophic event a dozen years ago, local and state officials have ramped up efforts to combat flooding in southwest Washington. Sahlin said Thursday that while the future looks promising, “I think they’re close, but I’m not sure they’ll get anything done before we have another flood.”

With Sahlin leaving his position to travel with his wife and spend more time with his family, including a 15-month-old granddaughter, Centralia Public Works Director Kim Ashmore is the new dean among local agencies. Ashmore has held his current position for a little less than two years, but he and Josh Metcalf, who took over the same position for Lewis County less than a year ago, have many years of experience in the field.

Ashmore initiated quarterly meetings with Metcalf and Lougheed at the start of this year so they could talk through different ideas and learn from each other as they continue to partner on projects throughout the Twin Cities and build relationships as compatriots in the public sector charged with helping lead their respective jurisdictions into the meat of the 21st century.

“I remember working with Rick when he was one of the superintendents over there,” Ashmore said Thursday. “He’s helped me out a lot through the years and I’ve always been able to make a phone call over to bounce things off him. He’s kind of been a mentor to me the past two years and he’ll be missed, but 37 years is an incredible achievement.”

Once he’s settled into the next phase of his life, Sahlin envisions a possible return to volunteering on city advisory boards or with other organizations in Chehalis. He spent 23 years as a volunteer firefighter with Lewis County Fire District 6 before injuries kept him from continuing.

Asked how he wants to be remembered by those he’s spent decades working with and serving, Sahlin said he hopes its that he always strived to be fair and practical, no matter the situation.

“Hopefully that it’s that I worked well with people and listened to what they had to say,” he said. “That I was able to, if there was a disagreement, move past it and work with everyone. I don’t usually say too much unless there’s something that needs to be said, and I think that listening a lot and making decisions based on what I heard did me a lot of good over the years.”