St. Helens Names Two City Employees of the Year

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 28, 2020

ST. HELENS, OR – Each year, the City of St. Helens names an employee of the year who consistently goes above and beyond for the public and fellow co-workers. Normally, one employee stands out from the rest of the nominees who are submitted for consideration by their peers. However, for 2019, a review panel chose two employees who demonstrated outstanding work ethic and customer service.

St. Helens Public Works Office Assistant Sheri Ingram and Municipal Court Clerk Melanie Payne were named the 2019 City of St. Helens Employees of the Year at the City’s annual employee recognition banquet on January 24, 2020.

Ingram and Payne were two of seven employees nominated by their peers for the award. The City assembles a panel of five community members who are not related to the City of St. Helens to be judges for the yearly award. The panel is asked to set aside all bias and judge the nominees solely based on the nominations received, emphasizing the quality of the nomination and employee rather than the quantity of nominations.

Public Works Office Assistant Sheri Ingram has worked for the City for over 21 years in the Public Works Department. She is described by her peers as a person with a strong dedication to her role and someone who is unafraid to take on the extra workload that regularly lands on her desk. As the first point of contact for her department, Ingram often helps community members who are needing assistance from a different government agency. She does not turn these people away but makes the extra effort to track down the information that is needed to ensure the customer finds the information that they need.

Municipal Court Clerk Melanie Payne has worked for the City’s Municipal Court for over 14 years. After she took on the new role of Court Clerk in 2019, she went above and beyond to dig the court out of a large backlog of case files. She dedicated a significant amount of time beyond her normal work week to ensure that the Court was operating in a way that the City of St. Helens could be proud. She did this while simultaneously starting the process of transferring the court to a new software system. This meant that she personally reviewed over 700 criminal statutes and carefully updated each of the criminal codes in the new system.

The St. Helens Employee of the Year program was implemented in 2013. An employee of the year is someone who consistently exemplifies behaviors that reflect favorably on the City. He or she is an employee that goes above and beyond on a regular basis; someone who goes the extra mile to help customers, both internally and externally; responds to inquiries in an efficient and timely manner; regularly participates in employee-related events; puts the City’s interests and the interests of his or her co-workers above their own; has an exemplary attendance record; behaves off duty in a manner that reflects positively on the City since City employees are public officials even outside work; has a positive attitude no matter the circumstances; and is noticed by people in and out of the organization.

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For further information regarding the employee of the year program, please contact City Recorder Kathy Payne at 503-366-8217 or by email at kathy@ci.st-helens.or.us.