Community Profile — Sondra Creighton

Community Profile — Sondra Creighton

Monday, 07 May 2007

Sondra Creighton, Public Works Director

Sondra Creighton loves her job, but she needs your help to do it. “I very much encourage citizens to call 311 whenever they see a missing sign or a badly-timed signal or a pothole,” Creighton said. “We have people out looking but they’re usually fixing things that we know about and not looking for new problems. We rely on citizens for help.” With her jurisdiction covering nearly all of Austin’s infrastructure, the public works director has a lot on her hands.

Family: Husband and a daughter, 12

Education: Bachelor’s degrees in linguistics and engineering from the University of Texas

Contact information: sondra.creighton@ci.austin.tx.us

Q. What does the public works department do?

A. In a nutshell, we do capital improvements and manage city transportation.
On the building side, we handle the construction of new buildings such as fire stations, EMS, library, parks and recreation and recreation centers. Public works does Austin’s larger buildings as well, such as the new municipal court house, city hall and the new Mexican-American Cultural Center. We do work on any public buildings, new or old.
On the transportation side, we oversee street maintenance, resurfacing, filling potholes and replacing faded street markings and signs. We’re also responsible for the regulatory side of things, such as right-of-ways, traffic signals and traffic studies to see if a signal or a stop sign is warranted. We also manage traffic signal synchronization.

Q. How did you get this job?

A. I started in linguistics, and got a degree at UT, then I found it wasn’t employable. My brother said I needed to go into finance or engineering, something more practical. I started taking classes in math and physics and found it interesting because I’d been in the non-literal liberal arts world, and in math and science everything was black and white. I liked that it was so literal. I got involved in construction and engineering and started working with contractors building homes.
I got my engineering degree and then got a job with the city. I’ve been with the public works department for 22 years doing all sort of positions including drainage and utilities, and have worked my way up through the department.

Q. What is the city doing to improve bike mobility from north Austin to the rest of the city?

A. A bike safety task force just formed with city staff and all interested parties. This task force is working on developing goals and objectives to improve cycling for commuters, hopefully to come up with new ideas about identifying new locations for primary cycling-commuting routes and ways to increase the number of bike commuters, which right now is only about four percent.
Personally I’d like to see a world-class cycling commuter facility, but that would require a lot of money. I’m not sure our city is quite ready for it yet. It would be great to have a whole cycling bond in an election.

Q. What do you like most about your job?

A. I’m a risk-taker, and I’m not afraid to go out and try something new or different if it could make a project better or more efficient. It’s really gratifying to find a new challenge, having people say it can’t be done and explore new ways of doing things.
I think about the Civilian Conservation Corp. in the Depression, when so many were put to work doing public works. To this day, those facilities are still there, and the workers’ values were such that they wanted to do quality work and build things that were there to stay. I admire all that they gave to our country, and I’m glad to be able now to contribute public works to future generations. The Mexican-American Cultural Center and city hall are great buildings that will be here long after I’m gone. It’s very gratifying to be part of that.

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