Veteran shadows Smoak
“It’s great to be able to work with somebody whose got such great leadership background already, coming from the U.S. military, especially in his position as a retiring colonel,” Smoak said of Sheffield. “He’ll just fit right in. He’s learning what we do and what local government does, so it’s been great.”
The initiative is through the International City/County Management Association, the professional association for city and town administrators.
“This particular program, the veteran’s management fellow, allows military members who are completing their time in service to spend a period of time at a civilian institution — it can be a commercial entity, like a Fortune 500 company — or, in this case, a local government,” Sheffield said. “It allows them to translate their military skills they have learned over the course of their career into a new line of work, a new industry, a new profession, on the back side of their military career.
“In this case, I’m an active duty Air Force officer who has elected to retire Dec. 31, and as part of my retiring after 24 years I am hoping to transition my Air Force experience into local government,” he added. “David Smoak, Town administrator, is taking me under his wing to show me the ropes.”
Smoak said the Town is not paying Sheffield for the experience, but “I think the U.S. government still has him under contract for right now.
“He’s really just learning about our departments and what we do as a Town and try to get ingrained into the various services we provide,” the Town administrator added. “He’s doing some special projects for us, and he will continue to do some special projects over the next couple months.”
Sheffield started the four-month initiative the beginning of September and will end the program during the holidays in December.
“In my last military assignment, I was vice commander of Space Launch Delta 30 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California,” Sheffield said. “In that role, I managed all the things that kept the installation going. “So, if you can think about what a town or community manager can do — fire department, police department, roads, HR — that was my job.”
Through the ICMA program, he applied to the fellowship and told ICMA in what parts of the country he was interested locating.
“They, in turn, went out and sourced towns that would take somebody on,” Sheffield said.
Growing up in Montana and spending the last 24 years in the military, “I think we’ve been in 16 different states or countries with the military,” he said.
After buying a house in West Knoxville, “We’re not going anywhere,” Sheffield said.
