Public health director to retire March 26
Matt Constantine had previously told Kern supervisors of intention to leave the position in early 2021
Kern County Public Health Services Director Matt Constantine has announced he plans to retire on March 26.
This follows an announcement made in 2019, when Constantine informed the Board of Supervisors he intended to retire in early 2021.
On Wednesday he gave supervisors an exact date.
While he admitted the coronavirus pandemic made him consider delaying his plan, he said the upcoming vaccine rollout allowed him to keep to his original schedule.
He added that his retirement would not interfere with the county’s COVID-19 response effort.
“We’ve all been on this fight with COVID and trying to do everything we can to control the transmission,” he said in an interview with The Californian. “And with the release of the vaccine in December, and now our complete focus on vaccinating our community, we see light at the end of the tunnel.”
A longtime Kern County employee, Constantine began his career 27 years ago as a health inspector. He worked his way up to director of Environmental Health Services
in 2006 and eventually Public Health Services in 2009, when the two departments merged.
Constantine, 51, has been a steady presence throughout the pandemic, regularly updating the community on the spread of the virus.
In comments to The Californian, he credited the 300-plus public health employees for their efforts fighting coronavirus, saying the pandemic had forced everyone in the department to work harder than they thought was “humanly possible.”
“I have mixed emotions,” he said of his retirement. “This is my family. These are folks that I spend every waking moment with thinking about how we can improve the county. And I really enjoy coming to work every day. And I think there are very few people that can say that.”
On Tuesday, supervisors are scheduled to meet in closed session to discuss the appointment of the next Public Health director. Constantine referred a question about his eventual replacement to the board.
The county has recently launched a mass vaccination site at the fairgrounds, and is awaiting the arrival of more doses before further inoculations can begin. As the county starts to see the beginning of the end of the pandemic, Constantine believes the department is in a good position to succeed.
“They are a hardened, hard working dedicated group of public servants that are there because they want to help,” he said. “And I feel really confident, and really excited about what they’ll accomplish.”