Sean C. Morgan
If fire chiefs, city managers and superintendents are the heads of their local government agencies, their executive assistants serve as the hearts.
In Sweet Home, that would be Julie.
For the School District, it’s Julie Emmert. At the Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District, it’s Julie Mayfield, and sitting in the city manager’s office at City Hall, it’s Julie Fisher. Together, their organizations make up nearly 100 percent of Sweet Home’s local government.
“I’m going to say $97,000,” Fire Chief Dave Barringer told Mayfield during a recent visit by a reporter with a question. Barringer was trying to recall the cost of remodeling the living quarters at the Fire Hall. “I’m mixing two projects together right now. I just want to tell him the right number.”
Mayfield quickly gave Barringer the correct answer – nearly $93,000, for a report on the final projects funded by the Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District’s bond levy.
That’s just one of the ways the three Julies contribute to their agencies.
For a local news reporter, they are indispensable sources of information, always available at a moment’s notice to answer questions and fill in missing details or to provide a public record. They make sure everyone knows about important dates.
It’s Emmert who ensures that The New Era Christmas letters arrive on time. She’s working on it even before The New Era asks her each year.
It’s Mayfield who constantly answers the phone and shares the details from minor fire reports.
It’s Fisher who manages and shares the city’s extensive calendar and information for meetings. The three Julies are always quick to help out with whatever unusual or routine request this newspaper might send their way.
Their bosses often credit them for keeping things organized and moving forward.
Julie Fisher
A member of the Gourley family, Fisher grew up in Sweet Home, graduating from Sweet Home High School in 1991. She spent a year at Brigham Young University before returning to Sweet Home, where she married Jeremiah Fisher. They spent three years at Ft. Drum, N.Y., and then returned to Sweet Home where they have remained ever since.
The longest job she held was at East Linn Christian Academy, where she taught junior high and high school art and home economics and preschool. She started out at the Liberty campus and worked on both campuses. She became the elementary school secretary before taking a position with the City of Sweet Home.
“When I worked for the school, my boys were students there,” Fisher said. “They were at an age they didn’t need mom taking them (to school).”
Fisher wanted to find a job in Sweet Home when she saw an opening for a city planning assistant.
“The job description, it talked about summer recreation,” Fisher said. “I thought it would be a good fit.”
Former Community Development Director Carol Lewis hired her about eight years ago.
Fisher didn’t realize how large the planning component of the job was, she said.
“I loved it. It was a hard decision to leave that position.”
Former City Manager Craig Martin hired her as his administrative assistant after Wendy Younger left to take another job about five years ago, she said, and “this is a perfect position for me.”
It is her job to make sure that the council meetings, regularly held on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month, are noticed and set up. She distributes meeting agendas and packets. She also handles noticing and meeting information for all of the city’s other committees.
Fisher tracks the terms of each committee member and lets them know when it’s time to reapply. She assists the city’s elections official, the city manager, with election questions, handing out filing packets, collecting election forms.
She helps the city manager and city attorney with human resources, keeping policies up to date as laws change; and she helps the city manager stay organized, sometimes adding meetings to his schedule and making appointments. She also makes sure the city manager and mayor have everything they need for meetings.
With changes in leadership in many departments, new department heads and supervisors may not know where things are kept or organizational history. Fisher is there to help.
She’s frequently the first person people talk to when they’re calling the city manager.
She expects to retire from this job, Fisher said.
“We love where we live. I love being in town. I like the community members. I like helping them. I like that somebody’s getting an answer when they call. I love working with the council. I loved working with Carol too. In fact, I’ve loved working with everybody.”
She thinks that’s the key to success at work: It’s hard to be good at a job without also loving it.
“We are extremely dependent on Julie and what she brings to the table,” said City Manager Ray Towry. “Her attention, demeanor and dedication are foundational to what we’re trying to do.”
Her historical knowledge is also important, he said, and even more crucial are her ties to the community.
Towry came to Sweet Home from a small town, but that was Ephrata, in Eastern Washington. While the two communities have similarities, they’re different in many ways; and Fisher has been a big part of helping him understand them.
“Julie plays probably a much bigger role than the title of administrative assistant,” Towry said. “She is, in many ways, almost a department head in and of herself, with some of the functions she has the ability to perform. She can go out and find policies and resources to update (policies).”
Fisher has been willing to do that and is working hard to expand her skills in human resources, Towry said, noting jokingly that when the two of them attend semi-annual conferences that Fisher always schedules herself the good classes and Towry the boring ones.
At a big-picture level, “we’re able to have more broad-based discussions on direction, and she’s able to take care of some of the detail work,” Towry said.
“She’s a great communicator. She has great customer service skills. She’s really able to see the big picture and drill down into details from there.
“Julie’s essential. I wouldn’t have survived the transition without her. I don’t just consider her a co-worker but a very good friend.”
Julie Mayfield
Mayfield grew up in San Jose, Calif. She moved in 1995 to Cottage Grove, where she ran her own business in print, copy, signage and graphic design for four years.
She began her career with medical agencies at Oregon Medical Laboratories in the Eugene-Springfield area in 2000. She worked there for four years and then went to work as the business office manager at Prestige Care at the Creswell Care Center, where she stayed for a year before moving to Redmond.
There she spent 5½ years working at Cascade Medical Center, before moving to Eugene, where she worked as the activities director at Creswell Care Center.
Mayfield accepted a job at Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District to be closer to her grandchildren, and went to work on April 1, 2014. The fire district board hired Mayfield just prior to Barringer taking his position as fire chief, following the retirement of Mike Beaver.
Mayfield has one daughter, Jennifer, 25, and two stepdaughters, ages 31 and 32. She has eight grandchildren, she said, and “one amazing husband,” Gene.
At the Fire Hall, she is a one-person office, handling payroll, payables, receivables, ambulance billing, Fire-Med insurance, public contact as the receptionist, event planning and administrative duties for the fire chief. She doesn’t supervise anyone, and no one asks her what she is working on, so she must be self-motivated and organize her own daily schedule.
She noted that her office career really began in junior high when she worked as a student assistant in the school office.
“I enjoy it,” Mayfield said. “Every day’s different. I do a lot of the same things over and over, but I work with three different shifts, different groups of staff daily. My job’s pretty much alone, but there’s still people around.”
She expects to stay in this job, probably long after the current fire chief retires, she said.
“I enjoy the people that I work with. I love the work. It’s challenging. I enjoy my autonomy.”
She has to keep up on things constantly, setting goals and achieving them, she said. Among them, she has been able to improve the collections rate annually, although it has leveled off this year.
“I’d say she’s the hub of an information exchange,” Barringer said. “Every part of the community goes to her for what they need from the fire district.
“We all have her on the mind when we have a question. She keeps things organized. She keeps things field. She keeps things scheduled.”
Mayfield works with a bookkeeper to take care of payroll, Barringer said. She puts the vouchers in front him to pay the bills. When he forgets to sign them, she gives him a friendly reminder a couple of hours later.
“She does all the ambulance billing, and she does it all with dedication,” Barringer said. “She does it very efficiently, and she’s always in a great mood. She’s always easy to be around. She’s a pleasure to work with. She has good solutions to problems. Without my phone calendar and without her, I would be in trouble.”
Julie Emmert
Emmert went to work as a secretary at Hawthorne Elementary School on March 8, 1999, when Gloria Mittleman was principal. She moved to the superintendent’s office on July 14, 2014, succeeding Lynn Stauffer, who retired, just prior to the departure of Supt. Don Schrader. She worked with Supt. Keith Winslow for two years, and is in her fourth year working with Supt. Tom Yahraes.
Emmert is married to Scott Emmert, who works at Cascade Timber Consulting. Her son Drew is a PE teacher and head basketball coach at Sweet Home High School. Her son Colton is pastor at River of Life Fellowship.
Emmert, a member of the Namitz family, grew up and attended school in Sweet Home. Her mother was a payroll clerk with the School District for many years. Emmert graduated from Sweet Home High School in 1985.
She took business classes at Linn-Benton Community College before going to work for a grass seed company that later was purchased by Barenbrug USA.
After the births of her two boys, Colton and then Drew, she stayed home for five years until she was asked to volunteer at Pleasant Valley kindergarten, where she ended up subbing for about year before returning to work at Barenburg as administrative assistant to the president for another year.
Colton was in the third grade and Drew was in kindergarten “when that job opened up,” Emmert said. She loved her job at Barenbrug, but she thought working at Hawthorne, where her children were attending school, would be amazing, a perfect job for a mom.
At Hawthorne, she was there when Principal Ryan Beck and school councilor and later Principal Terry Augustadt “brought so much fun” to the campus, Emmert said. They used the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) system to incentivize positive behavior in school, and “I loved it.”
When Stauffer retired, she and others asked Emmert if she would be interested in the superintendent’s administrative assistant position, and she applied.
“I miss the kids,” Emmert said of life in the School District headquarters on Long Street. “I got so used to having them around.”
But she has loved her new job. She made the switch looking for the “challenge of something totally new. As my kids were both gone, I was ready to go to work full time.”
In the superintendent’s office, “I manage all the daily stuff,” Emmert said. “I’m also the School Board secretary. Our office is the face of the district. She handles all the correspondence for Yahraes and manages his schedule, email and paperwork.
Emmert makes sure secretaries throughout the district have the information they need at their schools and prepares reports for the Oregon Department of Education. She manages licensing for certified staff, and she works with the public as an information resource.
“When people need anything, they call here,” she said.
“Some of my favorite things to do is organize everything for the board, working with the board,” and preparing the board’s meeting packet, Emmert said. “We have an amazing board. I just love our board.”
“Working for Tom, he’s amazing. He cares about our community. He cares about our district and where we’re going, our families and kids. He’s a big communicator. He wants everybody to know what’s gong on.”
That makes it easier to do her job, she said.
“And I love Sweet Home. It’s special to be a part of that.”
Life in the district office is not all always “happy, joy,” Emmert said. “But it’s a joy to give back to the community and our kids.”
“She takes care of a myriad of things,” Yahraes said. She is involved in human resources, “squaring away” new and veteran employees. She oversees job postings. When a new family moves to the district, she’s often their first contact.
“She’s the heart of the district. She sets the tone. She’s detail-oriented. Finally, she cares about the community deeply. She has historical, first-hand knowledge of our community and schools.”
Emmert’s children went to school in the district, Yahraes noted, and her grandchildren are likely to attend school in Sweet Home as well.
Emmert has worked at the school level as well as the district level, he said, and her knowledge of the district’s programs is “absolutely superior.”
“Her positive attitude makes working fun for everyone at the district,” Yahraes said. Her demeanor sets the tone, lifting the spirits of those around her.
“For me and the board, she keeps us organized,” Yahraes said. “Her detail helps me stay on track and get jobs done. It makes my job so much easier, organizing meetings and prioritizing some of the things I need to do during the week.
“I know when somebody calls the superintendent’s office, I know Julie’s going to handle it.”
She is customer-friendly, he said, and she’ll guide whomever to whatever resources they need.
“That’s what you want,” he said, whether it’s a student, staff member or parent. “She’s going to see it through, and I just appreciate it so much. I couldn’t ask for anything better than that.”
Julie Emmert
Emmert went to work as a secretary at Hawthorne Elementary School on March 8, 1999, when Gloria Mittleman was principal. She moved to the superintendent’s office on July 14, 2014, succeeding Lynn Stauffer, who retired, just prior to the departure of Supt. Don Schrader. She worked with Supt. Keith Winslow for two years, and is in her fourth year working with Supt. Tom Yahraes.
Emmert is married to Scott Emmert, who works at Cascade Timber Consulting. Her son Drew is a PE teacher and head basketball coach at Sweet Home High School. Her son Colton is pastor at River of Life Fellowship.
Emmert, a member of the Namitz family, grew up and attended school in Sweet Home. Her mother was a payroll clerk with the School District for many years. Emmert graduated from Sweet Home High School in 1985.
She took business classes at Linn-Benton Community College before going to work for a grass seed company that later was purchased by Barenbrug USA.
After the births of her two boys, Colton and then Drew, she stayed home for five years until she was asked to volunteer at Pleasant Valley kindergarten, where she ended up subbing for about year before returning to work at Barenburg as administrative assistant to the president for another year.
Colton was in the third grade and Drew was in kindergarten “when that job opened up,” Emmert said. She loved her job at Barenbrug, but she thought working at Hawthorne, where her children were attending school, would be amazing, a perfect job for a mom.
At Hawthorne, she was there when Principal Ryan Beck and school councilor and later Principal Terry Augustadt “brought so much fun” to the campus, Emmert said. They used the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) system to incentivize positive behavior in school, and “I loved it.”
When Stauffer retired, she and others asked Emmert if she would be interested in the superintendent’s administrative assistant position, and she applied.
“I miss the kids,” Emmert said of life in the School District headquarters on Long Street. “I got so used to having them around.”
But she has loved her new job. She made the switch looking for the “challenge of something totally new. As my kids were both gone, I was ready to go to work full time.”
In the superintendent’s office, “I manage all the daily stuff,” Emmert said. “I’m also the School Board secretary. Our office is the face of the district. She handles all the correspondence for Yahraes and manages his schedule, email and paperwork.
Emmert makes sure secretaries throughout the district have the information they need at their schools and prepares reports for the Oregon Department of Education. She manages licensing for certified staff, and she works with the public as an information resource.
“When people need anything, they call here,” she said.
“Some of my favorite things to do is organize everything for the board, working with the board,” and preparing the board’s meeting packet, Emmert said. “We have an amazing board. I just love our board.”
“Working for Tom, he’s amazing. He cares about our community. He cares about our district and where we’re going, our families and kids. He’s a big communicator. He wants everybody to know what’s gong on.”
That makes it easier to do her job, she said.
“And I love Sweet Home. It’s special to be a part of that.”
Life in the district office is not all always “happy, joy,” Emmert said. “But it’s a joy to give back to the community and our kids.”
“She takes care of a myriad of things,” Yahraes said. She is involved in human resources, “squaring away” new and veteran employees. She oversees job postings. When a new family moves to the district, she’s often their first contact.
“She’s the heart of the district. She sets the tone. She’s detail-oriented. Finally, she cares about the community deeply. She has historical, first-hand knowledge of our community and schools.”
Emmert’s children went to school in the district, Yahraes noted, and her grandchildren are likely to attend school in Sweet Home as well.
Emmert has worked at the school level as well as the district level, he said, and her knowledge of the district’s programs is “absolutely superior.”
“Her positive attitude makes working fun for everyone at the district,” Yahraes said. Her demeanor sets the tone, lifting the spirits of those around her.
“For me and the board, she keeps us organized,” Yahraes said. “Her detail helps me stay on track and get jobs done. It makes my job so much easier, organizing meetings and prioritizing some of the things I need to do during the week.
“I know when somebody calls the superintendent’s office, I know Julie’s going to handle it.”
She is customer-friendly, he said, and she’ll guide whomever to whatever resources they need.
“That’s what you want,” he said, whether it’s a student, staff member or parent. “She’s going to see it through, and I just appreciate it so much. sI couldn’t ask for anything better than that.”
Julie Fisher
A member of the Gourley family, Fisher grew up in Sweet Home, graduating from Sweet Home High School in 1991. She spent a year at Brigham Young University before returning to Sweet Home, where she married Jeremiah Fisher. They spent three years at Ft. Drum, N.Y., and then returned to Sweet Home where they have remained ever since.
The longest job she held was at East Linn Christian Academy, where she taught junior high and high school art and home economics and preschool. She started out at the Liberty campus and worked on both campuses. She became the elementary school secretary before taking a position with the City of Sweet Home.
“When I worked for the school, my boys were students there,” Fisher said. “They were at an age they didn’t need mom taking them (to school).”
Fisher wanted to find a job in Sweet Home when she saw an opening for a city planning assistant.
“The job description, it talked about summer recreation,” Fisher said. “I thought it would be a good fit.”
Former Community Development Director Carol Lewis hired her about eight years ago.
Fisher didn’t realize how large the planning component of the job was, she said.
“I loved it. It was a hard decision to leave that position.”
Former City Manager Craig Martin hired her as his administrative assistant after Wendy Younger left to take another job about five years ago, she said, and “this is a perfect position for me.”
It is her job to make sure that the council meetings, regularly held on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month, are noticed and set up. She distributes meeting agendas and packets. She also handles noticing and meeting information for all of the city’s other committees.
Fisher tracks the terms of each committee member and lets them know when it’s time to reapply. She assists the city’s elections official, the city manager, with election questions, handing out filing packets, collecting election forms.
She helps the city manager and city attorney with human resources, keeping policies up to date as laws change; and she helps the city manager stay organized, sometimes adding meetings to his schedule and making appointments. She also makes sure the city manager and mayor have everything they need for meetings.
With changes in leadership in many departments, new department heads and supervisors may not know where things are kept or organizational history. Fisher is there to help.
She’s frequently the first person people talk to when they’re calling the city manager.
She expects to retire from this job, Fisher said.
“We love where we live. I love being in town. I like the community members. I like helping them. I like that somebody’s getting an answer when they call. I love working with the council. I loved working with Carol too. In fact, I’ve loved working with everybody.”
She thinks that’s the key to success at work: It’s hard to be good at a job without also loving it.
“We are extremely dependent on Julie and what she brings to the table,” said City Manager Ray Towry. “Her attention, demeanor and dedication are foundational to what we’re trying to do.”
Her historical knowledge is also important, he said, and even more crucial are her ties to the community.
Towry came to Sweet Home from a small town, but that was Ephrata, in Eastern Washington. While the two communities have similarities, they’re different in many ways; and Fisher has been a big part of helping him understand them.
“Julie plays probably a much bigger role than the title of administrative assistant,” Towry said. “She is, in many ways, almost a department head in and of herself, with some of the functions she has the ability to perform. She can go out and find policies and resources to update (policies).”
Fisher has been willing to do that and is working hard to expand her skills in human resources, Towry said, noting jokingly that when the two of them attend semi-annual conferences that Fisher always schedules herself the good classes and Towry the boring ones.
At a big-picture level, “we’re able to have more broad-based discussions on direction, and she’s able to take care of some of the detail work,” Towry said.
“She’s a great communicator. She has great customer service skills. She’s really able to see the big picture and drill down into details from there.
“Julie’s essential. I wouldn’t have survived the transition without her. I don’t just consider her a co-worker but a very good friend.”
Julie Mayfield
Mayfield grew up in San Jose, Calif. She moved in 1995 to Cottage Grove, where she ran her own business in print, copy, signage and graphic design for four years.
She began her career with medical agencies at Oregon Medical Laboratories in the Eugene-Springfield area in 2000. She worked there for four years and then went to work as the business office manager at Prestige Care at the Creswell Care Center, where she stayed for a year before moving to Redmond.
There she spent 5½ years working at Cascade Medical Center, before moving to Eugene, where she worked as the activities director at Creswell Care Center.
Mayfield accepted a job at Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District to be closer to her grandchildren, and went to work on April 1, 2014. The fire district board hired Mayfield just prior to Barringer taking his position as fire chief, following the retirement of Mike Beaver.
Mayfield has one daughter, Jennifer, 25, and two stepdaughters, ages 31 and 32. She has eight grandchildren, she said, and “one amazing husband,” Gene.
At the Fire Hall, she is a one-person office, handling payroll, payables, receivables, ambulance billing, Fire-Med insurance, public contact as the receptionist, event planning and administrative duties for the fire chief. She doesn’t supervise anyone, and no one asks her what she is working on, so she must be self-motivated and organize her own daily schedule.
She noted that her office career really began in junior high when she worked as a student assistant in the school office.
“I enjoy it,” Mayfield said. “Every day’s different. I do a lot of the same things over and over, but I work with three different shifts, different groups of staff daily. My job’s pretty much alone, but there’s still people around.”
She expects to stay in this job, probably long after the current fire chief retires, she said.
“I enjoy the people that I work with. I love the work. It’s challenging. I enjoy my autonomy.”
She has to keep up on things constantly, setting goals and achieving them, she said. Among them, she has been able to improve the collections rate annually, although it has leveled off this year.
“I’d say she’s the hub of an information exchange,” Barringer said. “Every part of the community goes to her for what they need from the fire district.
“We all have her on the mind when we have a question. She keeps things organized. She keeps things field. She keeps things scheduled.”
Mayfield works with a bookkeeper to take care of payroll, Barringer said. She puts the vouchers in front him to pay the bills. When he forgets to sign them, she gives him a friendly reminder a couple of hours later.
“She does all the ambulance billing, and she does it all with dedication,” Barringer said. “She does it very efficiently, and she’s always in a great mood. She’s always easy to be around. She’s a pleasure to work with. She has good solutions to problems. Without my phone calendar and without her, I would be in trouble.”