By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – Following an extensive recruitment process, the City of Port Angeles is pleased to announce that Calvin Goings has been appointed to serve as its first-ever Assistant City Manager and Director of Community Services.
Goings’ job, at least for starters, will be to facilitate organizational changes as the Department of Community & Economic Development transitions to the Community Services Department to reflect its relationship building and community-oriented work.
More specifically, Assistant City Manager Goings will oversee the following divisions:
- Housing
- Information Technology
- Long-range Planning, Policy and Climate
- Permitting/Customer Service
Goings brings to the table an impressive resume, with nearly 30 years of experience in administrative and executive leadership. Most recently, he served as Director of Facilities and Administrative Services for the City of Seattle, overseeing a team of over 500 employees. While there, he also supervised Seattle’s COVID-19 response, serving as Chief Executive Officer of the largest civilian-led mass vaccination site in the United States. Prior to that, Goings was Chief of Staff for Seattle’s City Light, the nation’s 10th largest public utility.
Previously, Goings led the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) in the Pacific Northwest, where he focused on the expansion of support to veteran-owned, women-owned, and minority-owned small businesses.
In the private sector, he led the statewide Washington Credit Union Foundation, supporting financial institutions as they engaged in economic empowerment within their communities.
Outside of work, Goings has continued his focus on inclusion and eliminating barriers through his service as a past member of the Board of Directors for the Greater Seattle Business Association, the nation’s largest LGBTQ Chamber. He has also volunteered on the Chancellor’s Advisory Council for the Seattle Community College system and as a mentor for the University of Washington’s MBA Program.
City Manager Nathan West says the City of Port Angeles is fortunate to have Goings joining the leadership team, and describes his skillset as a good match for tackling the departmental reorganization that lies ahead.
“I think, overall, what’s really important here is, this past summer we looked at a bit of restructure to ensure that we are giving good focus to some really important areas here at the City. And so, we restructured in a way that we created this new assistant city manager position that also oversaw those historic functions of community and economic development, as well as information technology. And so, that’s exactly what Calvin’s role will be. And we found the perfect fit to fill that role and, ultimately, an individual with some great and outstanding experience.”
We asked West to give us an idea of where Port Angeles residents can expect to see improvements in services as a result of the restructuring.
“Specifically, it enabled us to structure in a way that brings better focus and concentration on things such as permitting and customer service. Making sure we’re getting good and solid permit-related turnaround times, making sure that we’ve got a separate focus area for policy and long-range planning, as well as climate resiliency efforts here at the City. And that focus is going to be important. And then finally, just mentioning how critical that information technology segment is to the service that our entire city organization provides to this community every day. It couldn’t be more important.”
West made a point to say that the restructuring was not costing anyone their job, and, in fact, a new one has opened up.
“Yeah, we’re actually not losing any employees as part of this. And I think it’s important that, already part of the restructure occurred with a promotion to Benjamin Braudrick as a senior planner. In addition to that, a position was created to oversee the customer service and permitting element function of this new Department of the deputy director position is now out on the street. And we’re looking for applicants to fill that position.”
(City of Port Angeles photo)