Sandi Seader — “a public servant at heart” — has felt as though public service has been her calling since the age of 14, she said. Today, and for the past ten years, Seader serves as the assistant city manager of the city of Longmont.
Growing up in a small town between Romeo and Rochester, Michigan, Seader often accompanied her mother who worked in the community’s senior services center. During these visits, Seader reported feeling amazed by all the people the center was helping every day by providing meals, transportation and other kinds of assistance, she said.
The senior services center was a part of the city’s Parks and Recreation department. By age 14, Seader was employed by the department to work in their reception space. There, she would answer phone calls, make copies and frequently stop by the senior center “to help with whatever they needed,” she said.
While Seader was working in this position, the parks and recreation department received a grant to implement a program called Chores, “a wonderful synergy where low-income, in-need senior citizens would apply for physical assistance and (the department) would hire teenagers in the community to do that work for them,” Seader said.
As a high schooler herself, Seader was reassigned from her position behind the reception desk to one out in the field managing the Chores program. For young Seader, connecting senior citizens with the community’s youth and “bridging that generational gap between them” made her experience with the program fulfilling.
During the next couple years, Seader’s various job postings ran the gamut of typical high school jobs, she said, from working in the local library to mowing park lawns to teaching swim lessons. However, for Seader, each of these seemingly humdrum positions contributed to a realization that community work was her life’s passion. “I knew I loved being a part of the community and providing services for people,” she said.
In college, Seader worked as a resident assistant for Indiana University while classes were in session. During summer breaks, she held a position as a day-camp counselor for a special kind of kids camp offered by the city of Bloomington’s Parks and Recreation Department. According to Seader, this kids camp was remarkable due to a similar “synergy” she noticed from the Chores program back at home.
“The idea was connecting kids with their community,” she said. “We would take the public bus system to go on tours of different businesses and invite special guest speakers to come talk to the kid campers about commerce, non profits, manufacturing and other things. By the end of the summer, the kids really knew about their community.”
For Seader, helping to connect youth with the community during this time was the thread that led her further along into her lifelong journey of public service.
After graduating college with a degree in political science, Seader contemplated what she would study in graduate school when she realized there was a master’s degree program in public administration. Inspired by her past work experiences and eager to learn about the services that each department of a local government provides, Seader decided to earn her master’s degree in public administration supplemented by a degree in budgeting and finance.
Throughout her studies, Seader felt amazed while learning about all the different services cities provide. “If you think about it, everything you do from the minute you wake up is a city service,” she said, citing examples like using water to brush your teeth and walking on city sidewalks on your way to work. “All of the pieces that are part of our community are the responsibilities of city government.”
With degrees in hand, Seader moved to Maryland Heights, Missouri where she became a management intern in the city manager’s office. While observing the responsibilities of the acting city manager, Seader was intrigued to learn that this position, in contrast to other city employees, has a hand in every department of a local government.
“I think that other people think city managers just show up to work,” Seader said, “but (I realized) it’s actually a very hearty profession.” At this internship, Seader began to consider city management as a potential career path, and, as a result, she returned for one more year in higher education to obtain a certificate in urban management.
After working in the Public Works Department in the city of Lexington, Massachusetts for a while, Seader moved to Colorado in 1998 where she quickly found a job as a management analyst in the city of Longmont’s Public Works department.
While she bounced between various positions at the city of Longmont for the first handful of years, Seader applied two or three times for the position of assistant city manager without success.
As a result, Seader was discouraged from applying again when the position reopened approximately ten years ago. With some encouragement from Longmont’s Public Information Officer, Rigo Leal, however, Seader threw in her hat one last time and was awarded the position — finally securing the job she had wanted since her early 20s.
As Longmont’s assistant city manager, one of Seader’s responsibilities is to help coordinate community involvement opportunities for citizens. While doing this, “I am always amazed at how smart and caring our community members are,” she said.
Today, when comparing the city of Longmont to other local governments she’s worked for, Seader condones Longmont's outstanding sense of community in general, as well as how that spirit is translated into the city of Longmont’s work.
“The community spirit in Longmont is unlike anything I have ever seen before,” she said. “At the city of Longmont, we take care of each other and we take care of business. If our residents want something done, we do it. It’s very empowering and it’s very entrepreneurial. And the people here are just some of the nicest folks I’ve ever met.”
