Roseville Mayor Bruce Houdesheldt thanks city staff

Over the last month, California has been deluged with a relentless series of storms. Due to the leadership and vision of those who sat in these chairs during the 1986 flooding and the dedication of Roseville employees, our businesses and citizens have been fortunate to avoid the flooding or widespread and lengthy power outages experienced in surrounding communities in the region. Each of us on the City Council has witnessed first-hand or seen on social media pictures of the flash flooding from the Saturday storm that brought up to an inch of rain in an hour, temporarily inundating our trails and floodplain open space. But then nearly as quickly, the water passed through our system as designed. We have seen the property damage and downed trees gale force winds have generated. But through it all, our dedicated employees rose to the challenge. In dangerous and unpredictable conditions, the employees of Roseville Electric kept the power on and quickly procured a crane tall enough to stabilize a 175-foot tree that threatened property and our electrical grid in Downtown, our water and wastewater utilities worked as a team when the volume of calls required a quick response, our public safety team at Roseville Fire Department and Roseville Police Department braved the conditions to ensure the public was safe, our Parks, Recreation and Libraries staffed the sandbag operation, our Public Affairs professionals and countless other Roseville employees embodied our Mission Statement of delivering exceptional services to maintain a safe and healthy community. This isn't the first time and it won't be the last our employees rose to the occasion. In 2021, after the city navigated through the first year of the evolving COVID-19 protocols, a challenge coin was issued to Roseville employees. The coin reads in part "Adaptable and agile," "Make quality decisions" and "Focus on the people." Those are some of the exemplary values and ethics demonstrated by Roseville employees, not just in emergency and unexpected situations like we have just experienced, but every day. As someone said to me recently, "Roseville is a lovely city to live in." Each of us can proudly and humbly say, "We are Roseville". Bruce Houdesheldt is Roseville mayor through 2024. He was appointed to the City Council in 2019. Houdesheldt has also served as a city Public Utilities Commissioner and Planning Commissioner. He can be reached at bhoudesheldt@roseville.ca.us.