Pagsuberon becomes Olney City Administrator

The Olney City Council on Sept. 26 removed the “interim” from the title that Arpegea Pagsuberon has held for over a year, making her the new City Administrator, and the first-ever woman to hold the position. Mrs. Pagsuberon began serving as Olney’s municipal court clerk shortly after she and her husband Levi and son, Sebastian, 12 moved to town from Simi Valley, California, in July of 2017. She and Levi who works remotely as an information technology manager had an important criterion for choosing where to move when they left California - they wanted to pay cash for their home.

“We threw a dart on a map,” she said. “We saw several houses and we actually put bids on three of them and this one stuck. There was one other house in Geronimo, Oklahoma but we ultimately ended up picking Olney based on the schooling and the community.”

Mrs. Pagsuberon, who had never worked in city government before coming to Olney, had risen to Assistant City Administrator when her boss, Neal Welch, retired two years earlier than expected, on Aug. 27, 2021. The City Council gave her the interim job and went in search of an experienced city administrator to replace Mr. Welch. The Council interviewed several candidates but did not find a candidate with “a solid understanding of the operations of Home Rule municipalities” and who was “comfortable living and working in a rural setting,” as the job posting described.

The Council also required a bachelor’s degree in public administration, business administration, or management and a minimum of eight years working in the public sector.

Mrs. Pagsuberon did not have some of those attributes either, but she asked the Council to pause the candidate search so she could prove herself. And on Sept. 26, they decided that she had done so.

“It was a good chance for me to show everybody what I am capable of. [I wanted to ] take the opportunity to find ways to help our community grow and move in the right direction,” she said. “It’s been a big learning curve but it’s been fun. I’ve learned a lot. When you live in a bigger city and you’re not involved in government in any way you don’t pay attention to [things like] how do we fund our streets? I didn’t even know what a sewer plant looked like. I learned so much more about the sewer plant than I ever thought I would.”

She said her priorities as city administrator include completing a new water infrastructure and “making sure the funds that we are acquiring through sales tax, property tax, and water and sewer … are being used appropriately.”

“We want to make sure they are being used so that the city will grow and not crumble,” she said. “Making sure we are using it wisely and that also includes our people. The reality is if we don’t have people to support our infrastructure in the city, it’s hard to maintain it. Our people, just like our community, they matter. They make our wheels turn.”

She also wants to create a long-term plan that can serve future city leaders, she said. “Something we can set in motion that can move along to the next person, whenever that may be. I look forward to learning all there is to effectively serve our community.”