No regrets that a 5-year stay turned into 40 for Bob Karls
Here's something to ponder: What were you doing 40 years ago? That would be 1982. What was going on in your life at that time and how is that reflected now?
For some in Pontiac at the time, there was graduation from high school in the spring that has now led to reunion time over the summer. For others, there was college or trying to figure out how to make a living.
For Bob Karls, it was starting a new job in a new town in a new state. It was January 1982 when Karls made his home in Pontiac with his bride.
“When we were driving here, I always told her that 'as a wife of a city administrator, you're going top be moving a lot,'” told members of the city council and the audience at the Aug. 15 city council meeting. “As we're driving, following the moving van to town, she turned to me and said, 'are we going to be here long?' I said, 'five years max, honey. Five years max.'”
Susan Karls has been a part of this community for 40 years — far from the original five Bob said they would be here.
Susan Karls was at that Aug. 15 meetings. It was the fulfillment of a promise Bob said she made after attending his very first city council meeting in 1982. Bob Karls retold the story of how Susan said the next meeting she attended was going to be Bob's last.
The Aug. 15 Pontiac City Council meeting was the final meeting Bob Karls was officially a part of as Mayor Bill Alvey read a proclamation denoting Aug. 26 as Bob Karls Day.
Karls has handed the reins of the city administrator's position to Jim Woolford, who noted when he was hired for the job that he had big shoes to fill. Without a doubt, since Woolford is only the second city administrator Pontiac has had.
Karls thanked his wife for her support through the years. He also told those at the meeting of the many things had taken place in his 40 years here. There were major floods, droughts and Y2K, he said.
“I can remember New Year's Eve we sat in the fire station watching New Year's Eve in Australia to see what was going to happen,” Karls said. “It was very uneventful and we survived that.”
The city experienced the potential loss of the prison, dealing with the COVID pandemic, which was still evident as the council has been meeting at the Eagle Theater since the group was able to gather in person after having dealt with meeting through Zoom.
And most recently, the inheritance of the ambulance service, of which he said the city had all of 59 hours notice that it was going to be in that business.
Commercial development has been a huge tribute to the efforts of the city with Karls in the lead. Although, as city administrator, Karls never had a vote, he certainly had influence and was trusted to provide insight for ventures to get off the ground or not take off at all.
Karls said when he first got to town, he was given two goals — get rid of parking meters and get a new fire station. Both were accomplished.
Business in Pontiac had an entirely different look in 1982 that it does today.
“The thing that jumps out is the commercial growth, particularly the west end of town,” Karls said. “When we came here, Vermillion Plaza and Hornsby's, across the road, was the edge of the commercial district.”
Karls noted that the commercial district has now made its way west of the interstate, which he said was at one time seen as a barrier.
“The first phase of development occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s,” Karls said. “Lynn Chevrolet was the first project out there. Walmart came in and we used TIF funds to put in Rittenhouse and Newport and Deerfield Road.
“At that time, that was quite controversial. It was interpreted that we were building all this for Walmart, but we were building it for future commercial development. Once Walmart got established, everything else just followed.”
Since then there has been the growth of hotels and little gas station called Wally's. Karls said that Wally's is seen as an anchor and that developers are now trying to get into that area.
The downtown was not forgotten, Karls noted. He pointed out the reuse of Old City Hall and the former Abbott Automobile Co., which is where the Pontiac Public Library is now located.
PROUD and the facade grant program were developed to help with the development of the downtown. Other community-directed things have taken been developed, including the Rec-Plex and the rec-center, as well as the splash pad and the band shell at Humiston-Riverside Park.
Along with that has been tourism, and 2005 was a significant year for Pontiac. That's when a lot of things happened, and Karls was there in the middle.
“It started as we had tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands people driving 66. Our challenge was to get people who are making that trip off the road and into town,” Karls said. “That was the whole concept behind the Route 66 Museum.”
Following the development of the Route 66 Museum, getting it moved from McLean, came the growth of the downtown sites, including the Pontiac-Oakland Museum and the Walldogs murals.
“Back then, the concept was they are going to the museum and getting into their cars and leaving,” Karls said. “That then gave way to the Walldogs and the Pontiac-Oakland Museum. All of a sudden, we had a product that was sufficient enough to generate over-night stays.”
Karls' impact can be felt all over the community and that's thanks to hanging around for 40 years instead of booking after five.
“Thinking back, I've attended over 1,100 city council meetings,” Karls said in his Aug. 15 speech. “That's about a year's worth of work time. The city council is the political foundation of the city.
In speaking with the Daily Leader recently, he said, “The five years is pretty typical for this profession, certainly back in the '80s and '90s.
“From the family standpoint, this became home,” Karls added. “Kids became settled here, my wife became settled here. It's a great place to raise a family.
“There were periods in this time that I was actively looking and had some offers, but when I weighed those offers versus what I had in Pontiac, it made no sense to move from a personal end or a professional standpoint.”
There have been storms that have been weathered, literally and figuratively. None bigger, according to Karls, than COVID.
“I remember calling our staff together, saying we don't know what this is or what the impact is going to be,” Karls said. “At the time, I said, we don't know what this is; our grandkids might be reading about this in the history books that changed the country.
“But our job is to get our little corner of the world through this thing. Whatever that means. Whatever that looks like, that's our job. Our whole team just dud tremendous through that.”
Karls has served the city under five mayors in his 40 years. He said the quintet is a group of five unique individuals. It started with Dale Campbell, who was in office when the city administrator position was created, and advanced through Mike Ingles, who was part of the committee as an alderman that hired Karls, Scott McCoy, Bob Russell and current Mayor Bill Alvey.
“The one thing that was common among them was commitment to the city. All five of them were committed to the city administrator form of government. They were all supportive of me and didn't try taking over the administrative functions,” Karls said.
Karls got his start in city management with his first job in Smithville, Mo., where he served for 5½ years after receiving his master's degree from Missouri-Kansas City.
He said he is now looking to take a break for a bit, maybe go on a vacation. He does have his family — wife Susan, daughter Lindsey and son Blake, as well as mother-in-law Sue Park — to keep him occupied.
“I want to stay active and if I can be of assistance to the community, I want to do that,” Karls said. “The Main Street Program interests me, I want to be a volunteer in that.”
Forty years of dedicated service to one community means an awful lot not only to the person who put in that amount of time, but also the community that benefitted from that service.
Karls is the first to tell anyone, it was certainly a team effort between himself and his family and himself and the community. But it was the leadership of Bob Karls that has made Pontiac a destination for travelers and businesses. His fingerprint will be on Pontiac for years to come.
This article originally appeared on Pontiac Daily Leader: Bob Karls Pontiac City Administrator retires after 40 years
