office of the city manager
City Manager's Excellence Award

4th Annual City Manager’s Excellence Award

The City of San Antonio’s CORE Values program recognizes employees who exemplify Teamwork, Integrity, Innovation and Professionalism. The highest level of this program is the City Manager’s Excellence Award, now in its fourth year. The presentation this year coincided with Public Service Recognition Week; with over 12,000 employees the City of San Antonio succeeds every day because of our employees

On May 7, 2019, the City Manager awarded the 4th Annual City Manager’s Excellence Award to employees who have demonstrated outstanding commitment to public service and to the San Antonio community. We congratulate them for their well-deserved recognition.

Victoria Roeder and Veronica Carrillo – Finance Department

finance department

Victoria and Veronica are nominated for their outstanding leadership and determined efforts to ensure accurate and timely financial reporting. Veronica is the Fiscal Administrator with 21 years with the City and Victoria is the Controller with 14 years with the City. They are passionate finance professionals and value accurate and timely financial transparency. By providing training and guidance to their fiscal and accounting teams, Victoria and Veronica have played a significant role in improving communication between the budget department and over 40 City departments, resulting in two recent highlights:

  • No findings for the City’s Fiscal Year 2018 Audit.
  • The number of days to issue the City’s Annual Financial Report (CAFR) is the lowest in 10 years.

Jacquline Maldonado – SA Metro Health Department

Jacquline Maldonado

Jacquline is a Public Health Nurse at the City Chest Clinic who has been with the City for 5 years. She was nominated for her incredible caring and professionalism demonstrated in February 2018 involving a discharged and extremely infectious Tuberculosis patient threatening to board a bus and travel to Minnesota. Jacquline spoke at length with the patient to discuss his options and urge him to stay at the hospital. He was admitted the very next day! It took a professional, caring and committed public health nurse to convince this young man to voluntarily enter treatment when many of our other public health tools were not going to make a difference.

Re-Visionaries Team – San Antonio Public Library

library team

This team of 10 employees was formed in 2017 to lead efforts to implement innovation, provide positive customer experience and continuously improve internal processes. They serve as liaisons from their divisions and branches to Library Leadership to increase communication, increase engagement and create an idea incubator. Since they started, this group has implemented several changes in response to staff feedback to include, but not limited to:

  • An all-staff in-person survey followed by meetings with employees at every Library branch.
  • Researched, planned, and facilitated the Library’s Staff Transformation Day, which was a day-long staff development and recognition day in February 2018.

One of the most important results is the Re-Visionaries Team has gained the trust of the Library organization as a whole and are able to obtain feedback directly from coworkers. With over 76 years of service with the City, the members of this team include:

  • Megan Cabrera
  • David Cooksey
  • Samantha Gordano
  • Haley Holmes
  • Heidi Novotny
  • Randall Polasek
  • Enedina Prater
  • Michelle Rickman
  • Megan Stanley
  • Megan Stanley

Eric McGowin - San Antonio Fire Department

Eric McGowin

As a Supply Chain Manager, Eric has been a critical member of the Fire Department for six years. During this time, he has worked to make improvement and develop efficiencies with the administrative, support and field operations divisions. He has streamlined the warehousing, inventory and delivery processes into one continuous system and the Fire and EMS supply functions have been successfully combined into one operation. The department has grown in station count by 6% over the last several years, and Eric has helped limit the inventory growth to only 1%. The last state of the department survey ranked customer satisfaction above 90% for the Supply Chain team, thanks in part to Eric’s work.

Aaron Arce – Solid Waste Management Department

Aaron Arce

Aaron is a Truck Driver who has been with the City for 5 years. In addition to performing his job at a high level, he is also fondly known as one of the ‘go-to’ for help at his worksite. Aaron is helpful, caring, resourceful, and happy to offer service no matter the task. He recently created a new method of testing new equipment which resulted in increased operational effectiveness, he excels in training and motivating his staff and coworkers, and he often provides critical feedback to the department to quickly overcome obstacles. One example of his attention to professionalism was during the workday, Aaron spotted an unsupervised toddler. He knocked on doors up and down the street, taking the time to find the toddler’s home and return him safely to his mother. He positively impacts his coworkers every day, as well as the City of San Antonio residents.