Hagemann, 28-year Jefferson County Administrator, retires

Jul. 6—WATERTOWN — After 28 years on the job, Jefferson County administrator Robert F. Hagemann III is closing this chapter of his career and retiring.

Hagemann's job put him in charge of day-to-day operations in Jefferson County. He helps build the annual budget, takes directives from the county Board of Legislators and puts them into action, and helps to run the regular meetings.

He said that work has presented many bright spots over the last nearly three decades, given him a strong sense of how the community works and a sense of pride in the future of it.

"I think things bode well for future generations residing in Jefferson County, and that makes me extremely excited about the future," he said.

Hagemann, born in eastern Michigan, came to Jefferson County in 1996 after serving as the Altoona, Pennsylvania, city manager and the Logan Township supervisor, also in Pennsylvania. At the time, Hagemann was joining Jefferson County right after the county had switched government styles, shifting from a board of supervisors running the county to a board of legislators. At the time, Hagemann told the Times that he felt like he was "coming home" to a region very similar to his home in Michigan.

He'd considered a job with the city of Watertown as manager, and was second in line for it but declined the offer. When the county administrator job opened months after the Board of Legislators was established, Hagemann went for it.

"I said I'll give it a try, because I had been here before and was intrigued but circumstances didn't work out," he said. "Lo and behold, eventually that's exactly what happened to become a golden opportunity, I was hired and have been here ever since."

Hagemann said he was excited, but knew the move to county government would be a challenge. He'd served for years in comparatively small town and city-level governments, but Jefferson County was much larger.

"In terms of county government, specifically with the programs, the departments and the duties and responsibilities at the county level, that was new to me, so it became a bit of a learning curve without question," he said.

The 15 county legislators were also a new challenge — that's a larger elected body than most cities or townships have, and as the Times reported in 1996, the legislators were split along lines defined by who had been on the former board of supervisors and those newly-elected under the legislature system.

But Hagemann held his post for 28 years, through 14 elections for the board that appoints him.

Hagemann is a member of the International City County Management Association, which reports that the average term of service for the county managers in their organization is roughly in the 10-year range as of the 2010s. When Hagemann came to Jefferson County in the late '90s, the average job term length was closer to four years, and when he started here, that's partly what he expected for himself.

"Without thinking twice about it, my expectation was to be here for several years, but if I got somewhere between 5 and 10 that would likely be it, and I would move on to some other career opportunity," he said. "But that's not how it worked out."

He said he was charmed to staying by four main factors: the superior quality of life that can be enjoyed in the region, the structure of his position with Jefferson County itself and the professionalism of the people he worked with, the nature of the challenges he was tasked with addressing in his job here, and the good nature of the elected board members who lead the decision making for the county.

"Over time there have been some changes in policymakers at the board level, but it's always worked out very well," he said. "We were never really political in a partisan standpoint. We had Democrats and Republicans, probably far more Republicans than Democrats, but those kinds of issues never surfaced," he said.

Hagemann said there are plenty of projects he is proud to have seen move forward: there's the development of the county agriculture development program from a nonprofit organization to an arm of the Jefferson County Industrial Development Authority, which has become a resource for agriculture development and policy for people across New York.

"To this day I still get calls from our ag friends saying they've heard we have this organization for agriculture, and they'd love to come talk to us or (Jay Matteson, county agricultural coordinator) because it's become really well known."

There's the balancing of the county budget to a point that the property tax rate has dropped 41% over the last 20 years, from $10.45 per $1,000 in assessed value in 2000 to $6.14 per $1000 in the current budget.

There's the tourism program, which has evolved to include a number of regional promotion organizations like the Thousand Islands International Tourism Council, which uses tax revenue generated by hotels, and soon from short-term rentals, to promote Jefferson County as a destination.

There's the construction of the Jefferson County Court Complex, a large project on Arsenal Street that yielded a court complex beautiful enough to serve as the repeated backdrop for elected officials in their visits to the city.

"It took a lot of effort, but it has worked out very well," he said. "There was a lot of coordination at the time, going back to 2000, 2004, and now we have a beautiful facility."

The county office building next door, one of the tallest buildings in the city, has been renovated top to bottom over the years, improving efficiencies and allowing more county departments to operate out of a single campus.

There's also the ongoing string of capital projects at the Watertown International Airport, which Jefferson County bought from the city in the early 2000s and began incremental expansion projects on. The airport now has stable, twice-daily commercial service to the hub airport in Philadelphia, and has expanded to serve over 40,000 commercial passengers a year. The airport is soon to break ground on a new, $30 million terminal expansion project that will add a jet bridge and baggage claim to the existing structure. All work done at the airport has been done without any tax money — funded entirely by state and federal grants.

Hagemann's term as county administrator came with a major challenge in recent memory — the COVID-19 pandemic. Hagemann was tasked with trying to keep the organization with its hundreds of employees and vital services running during a health emergency, while also helping to direct the response to the crisis.

In New York, county governments and especially county public health departments were tasked with running much of the day-to-day response.

Hagemann said he was proud of what Jefferson County had done in its response — coordinating closely with the local health care industry and Fort Drum, and running what in some cases were seen as model programs.

Jefferson County quickly established wastewater testing for COVID-19 when that method of surveillance was offered, and ran its own COVID-19 vaccination clinic at Jefferson Community College when no state-run vaccination centers opened nearby.

"I think the proactive approach taken by this community was certainly part of it, but so were many institutions and organizations, I think we had a positive impact to minimize that loss of life," Hagemann said.

He said he is hopeful there won't be another crisis when the expertise gained from COVID is needed, but the lessons were learned for the future's benefit either way.

Overall, Hagemann said he is confident with where the county is now as he leaves his post. The administration office has had a turnover of leading staff recently, and there new projects on official's radars.

"One of them is broadband," Hagemann said.

The county is putting out a request for proposals for a company to fill in the existing gaps in the county's broadband internet network.

Another upcoming project is the Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary, designated earlier this year. The area covers eastern Lake Ontario from just east of Rochester up to Cape Vincent and the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, aimed at protecting the shipwrecks, historic sites and archaeological record of the region.

Those projects will be handled by the incoming county administrator — the county formally nominated Ryan M. Piche, the current Lewis County manager, to the roe starting in late September. Hagemann formally left his role on Saturday, and in the interim few months the county's day-to-day activities will be run by Dylan M. Soper, the deputy county administrator who was appointed in March.

Hagemann, who just celebrated his 72nd birthday, will be staying in Jefferson County with his wife for the foreseeable future. His three adult children and their spouses live away from home now, but two are in driving distance and the third can easily be reached by plane with the help of the Watertown International Airport.

"Maybe not by design by accident, it's somewhat of a centralized location for us," Hagemann said. "Our intention is to stay in the area and get involved with other kinds of activities."