Mason City’s city administrator says hiring new airport manager first of several key retirements needing to be filled

MASON CITY — A long-time employee of the Mason City Municipal Airport has been named as the airport’s new manager. David Sims has worked in airport operations for 13 years.

City Administrator Aaron Burnett talked about Sims being promoted during today’s “Ask the Mayor” program on AM-1300 KGLO.  “This situation I think has gone very well, and it’s one of those things that we’re really trying to plan for is to make sure that we can continue to emulate this situation where we have those folks waiting in the wings to actually be promoted into the leadership position. I’m glad that this is going to work well, I think David will do a great job, and I’m looking forward to filling his position moving forward.”

Burnett says the city has been faced with a situation with a number of long-time employees retiring.  “I think a lot of organizations are dealing with this. There’s a lot of turnover with the graying of population and a lot of retirements upcoming. We have to find folks to come into those positions. I think fortunately here we’re able to have somebody internally that will do a great job, I think there will be no drop-off whatsoever. But you look at all the different departments of the city and trying to replace all these various positions, and making sure that we have that passing of institutional knowledge from one generation to the next is so that the city can continue to function at a high level, and it’s a difficult thing to plan for.”

Sims will replace Pam Osgood, who has worked for the airport for over 29 years and has served as the airport manager for the last 17 years.  You can listen back to more of Burnett’s comments from today’s “Ask the Mayor” program by clicking on the audio player below.