Joel and Shauna Kertamus hadn’t planned to retire within a month of each other.
The two long-time Grantsville City department heads had planned to stagger their retirements by about a year and a half. But when Shauna resigned as planning and zoning administrator in May, she found herself volunteering Joel, head of the roads department, for retirement.
“When I gave the mayor my retirement letter, I found myself saying, ‘and I’m going to try to get Joel to go out with me, too,’ because he had been having health problems. I really hadn’t planned that,” she said. “Then after I had said it, I pondered it and thought, ‘OK, how do I go about that, because he really needs to.’ But it really fell into place.”
That was a Monday. By that Friday, Joel was more or less retired. The next month, Shauna followed.
Their unexpectedly coordinated departure marked the end of two decades of a husband-wife team with the city.
Joel, 65, started with the city in 1990, taking over the roads department from Ferris Williams. Two years later, Shauna, 64, started as a part-time librarian. In March 1995, she became planning and zoning administrator.
A month later, Watt Homes began development on 450 acres on the south end of Willow Street — South Willow Estates. The move in many ways opened the floodgates to development in Grantsville, Shauna said.
“That just opened the door. It was just one big development after another then,” she said. “I had to learn [the job] really quickly, because we weren’t that sophisticated. We hadn’t seen anything of that magnitude or scale.”
That baptism by fire helped Shauna get a firmer handle on the intricacies of the job than she might have otherwise.
“When I first took the job, I thought, ‘OK, it’s this and this and this.’ It seemed like it was in this neat little package,” she said. “Well, suddenly that neat little package went out the window and there’s just so much to zoning.”
She added, “Every single situation kicks in different requirements, so it can appear to be on the surface, to be the same type of application or development, but different zones, different construction needs, it all kicks in something different, so I had to learn a vast array of things really quick. But I think it was better for me that way.”
The sudden increase in development also affected Joel’s work.
“We were under 5,000 people when I started and we’re at 10,000 to 11,000 now, so we’ve doubled,” he said. “And along with the subdivisions, all that infrastructure to support them had to go in.”
The increased infrastructure needs went along with several other system and policy improvement projects Joel was undertaking, including standardizing record keeping, implementing universal water meters, bringing the water system up to state standards, and digging three new wells.
“We rebuilt the wastewater treatment plant twice in my tenure, and did a lot of expansion on the collection system,” he said. “To get everything working, just taking care of little housekeeping things that increase revenue and improve service, it went through a dramatic change since I’ve been here.”
Despite somewhat different job descriptions, the couple’s respective departments have worked together frequently on development issues.
“They interfaced quite a bit because of the development would always have needs as far as the infrastructure goes — water, sewer, streets, parks, that sort of stuff, so we interfaced a lot,” Joel said. “We held a lot of meetings that were required for the development that we’d both attend and be able to input information and requirements to the developers.”
Shauna said she felt their relationship helped them to resolve problems involving their two departments more quickly.
“I think it worked really well, he and I being married, because we would come home at night and be able to discuss an issue and work things out so by the time we went back to work the next day, typically we could have problems all worked out,” she said. “I thought it went really well that way. He was always willing to help me when I needed it, and vice-versa. We felt like it was a benefit to the city to have a married couple in that capacity. I don’t know that they always thought that.”
One perennial challenge has been to adjust to the different management styles of a seemingly constantly shifting administration — in their 20-plus years, the couple has worked for four mayors, from Harold Murray to Meryl Cole to Byron Anderson to Brent Marshall, as well as dozens of city councilmembers. However, they said, the elected officials have been supportive of staff.
“We’ve had the support of all the mayors,” said Joel. “That’s one thing that’s been really good — even if you had a councilmember or two who thought otherwise, you had the mayors to back us up, and for the most part, most of the councilmembers, too, have been very supportive.”
Shauna said working with the members of the planning and zoning commission was also rewarding, especially since those officials are unpaid and often have to deal with a more contentious atmosphere than in other meetings.
“The planning commission, especially, are some of the best members of our community,” she said. “Most people don’t realize they are not paid for that at all, and they do that as pure community service, and they’re some of the best. I really appreciated that. It’s truly, truly been an honor to work with them. They take a lot of the heat that even the council doesn’t get because the planning commission kind of takes it and by the time the project gets to the council, things have calmed down more.”
In the months since their retirement, the couple has spent several weeks at Strawberry Reservoir with the youngest of their six children, and plans to spend more time with their children and grandchildren and work on projects that have been neglected.
Shauna said she feels confident her replacement, Jennifer Huffman, is more than capable of filling in her shoes.
“I feel really good about Jennifer Huffman. I think she’s eager to learn the job, and I think she has the self-confidence for it,” said Shauna. “You know, you have to come up against some very powerful people — attorneys, developers, engineers — you’re always in a different arena and you’ve got to be able to adjust and stand your ground to defend the ordinances of the city because you know a developer’s going to push, an attorney’s going to push. They want to get the most they can for the least.”
She added, “It’s a very key position in protecting the financial base of the city, to ensure all people pay a fair fee, that everybody’s paying the same, that no one is doing these things for nothing.”
Joel said his duties have been distributed to several employees, but he, too, is sure the department will do well in his absence.
“I spent 47 years working in that arena, gaining the expertise and gaining the experience to do that sort of stuff,” he said, “so it was a little hard to unload all that on a person. So I’ve been, over the past couple of years, training different individuals — some on doing the administrative reports and things of that nature, others on the mechanics of the water system.
“The guys I worked with down there, I couldn’t have asked for a better group to work with, and I mean that from the heart,” he added. “I worked with all of them for quite a few years, and they’re all hard-working, good, well-intentioned people. I obviously wish them the best and know they’ll be successful in carrying things on and if the city administrators will give those guys the opportunity, they’ll run with the ball and be successful. I have no doubt about it.
“One thing’s for sure,” he added, “it all goes on.”