City employees recognized for years of service
ATASCADERO — The Atascadero City Council met for its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 11, at 6 p.m. The meeting started with employee recognition for those who have been with the city for five-plus years.
“Tonight, I have the privilege of honoring the tenure of employees. As you know, this is the premiere place to work, and we have a wonderful culture and truly an employee family,” said City Manager Jim Lewis of Atascadero. “We like to recognize every five years our employees for their tenure and their incredible service to our city.”
Cody Ferris was celebrated for five years as a firefighter. Steve Stucky (police corporal) was honored for 10 years of service, along with Public Works Director Nick DeBar.
“Congratulations to you and your 10-year anniversary at the city. You made it to 10 years,” Lewis said to DeBar.
Kelly Arebalo was then honored for 25 years as the city’s administrative assistant at the Fire Department. She started her career as a public safety dispatcher in 1999. After spending 19 years in that role, she then applied for her current position. Lewis said that Arebalo is the voice of the fire department and always provides excellent customer service. Fire Chief Casey Bryson was also celebrated for 25 years of service.
“Chief Casey Bryson has committed his entire career to the City of Atascadero, and we are a much better city because of his service,” stated Lewis. “The Chief began his career service with us as a cadet firefighter for the Atascadero High School work experience program in the early ’90s.”
In 1994, Bryson became a seasonal reserve firefighter and was promoted to a full-time firefighter in 1999. He was quickly promoted to fire engineer and then fire captain in 2004, and he became a licensed paramedic. He was promoted to fire chief in 2017 after earning the trust of the department and the community.
“It’s been a privilege to work for the city for this long. All I can say is that you have some accomplishments to get to this level, but then once you’re here, it’s the people you have,” stated Bryson before thanking his staff.
Mayor Charles Bourbeau then thanked the employees who have been with the city for years and everyone currently serving the city.
“Everything we get done is because we have a good staff, so we really appreciate you,” he added.
Later, Deputy City Manager Lara Christensen addressed the council with a management report on an Award of a Design-Build Entity Contract for the Public Safety Facilities Project. The council was previously shown a possible design build process in a workshop in early 2024.
The Public Safety Facilities Project has been a topic of discussion since before Measure D-20 was implemented by putting it on the ballot. It was placed on the ballot because the city needed to find funding solutions to address deficiencies in their public safety facilities, specifically Fire Station #1. Voters passed the measure and it started providing funding to move forward with the project.
“Fire Station #1 has been deficient administratively, operationally, structurally, to really meet the current and future public safety needs,” Christensen said. “There were temporary building improvements that were identified and completed in the late 1990s and 2012 with the intention that as funding became available, resources would go towards fixing or building a new fire station. This fire station was built in the early 1950s.”
Fire Station #2 was built in the 1980s, and it houses a smaller crew. However, it currently is not large enough to house the crew that operates out of it, nor is it meeting current building codes. The Police Station was built in the 1960s and was originally a department store. All three buildings will stay on site.
“We started moving forward into the design-build procurement,” Christensen added. “Design-build procurement is a little bit different than what we’ve ever done here before. We typically do design bid where the city contracts with an architect team, an engineering team. We do all of the designing with those teams. We do all the engineering. Once that’s all done, we then go out to bid for a contract, and the contractor comes in and builds it for us.”
Design-Build is a way to work with all of those groups collaboratively by the city contracting with one entity, and that entity goes out and hires the architect and the engineering teams.
The Design-Build contract was awarded to Vanir Constructions in August 2023. They went straight into helping the city uncover its space needs and developing bridging documents. In June 2024, they issued an RFQ, and an RFP was issuedin August 2024. Proposals were received in November 2024. The city went into negotiations over the city’s budget with the F&H/LDA team, which commenced in December 2024 and culminated in late January 2025. The cost breakdown after those negotiations is as follows:
- Fire Station No. 1 and EOC — $21,924,235
- Fire Station No. 2 — $4,927,672
- Police Headquarters — $ 4,220,411
- Total — $31,072,318
There are still building layouts that need to be finalized before the start of the project after the award is given.
In a unanimous vote, the council moved forward with awarding F&H construction to move forward with the project.
The next Atascadero City Council meeting will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 25, at 6 p.m.
