County promotes 2 interim dept. heads
Villegas new chief financial officer, Summers now chief information officer
Yuma County Administrator Susan Thorpe appointed two interim department heads as full-fledged department heads this week, bringing two longtime employees into the leadership fold.
Gilberto “Gil” Villegas Jr. has become the county’s chief financial officer/financial services director, after eight years as the deputy CFO and holding the interim job for almost two months.
Clif Summers, another Yuma-area native, has been elevated to chief information officer/ITS director.
Villegas stepped into the CFO role a little earlier than he expected after his predecessor, Scott Holt, was arrested in August on charges of sexual misconduct with a minor and related offenses.
Holt reportedly admitted at the time to the misconduct with a 15-year-old boy earlier in the year. His next Superior Court hearing is scheduled for Oct. 19.
Villegas said at the time of the arrest there was already a succession plan being put in motion because Holt, 69, was expected to retire in early 2018 after nine years with the county.
“Unfortunately, he decided to do other things, and that caused a lot of problems on my end, because there were a lot of things I had to pick up right away, a lot of things I needed to do. So in addition to the things I needed to do as a deputy, the audit and operations, i needed to pick up on his things, which were more administrative and board of supervisors-like.
“It was very hectic at first, but thank God I have a very capable staff, and we were able to stabilize the situation.”
He now heads a finance department of 20 employees, sorted into five divisions: payroll, accounts payable, financial report-
ing, compliance, and general ledger. He hopes to start doing interviews soon and find his replacement as deputy CFO, to help him and the staff maneuver through tasks that touch every other county department.
Villegas has worked at Yuma County for 17 years and completed several leadership programs, most recently the Advanced Government Finance Institute, offered by the Government Finance Officers Association and held in July in Madison, Wis.
As one of 36 CFOs and budget directors selected from across the country, “we were all talking about the issues we’re facing when it comes to funding, when it comes to finding capable personnel who is committed to help us, that is committed to public service.”
Villegas was born in Yuma, grew up in San Luis Rio Colorado, Son., and came back to the Yuma area for classes at Arizona Western College before going up to Flagstaff for a bachelor’s in public accountancy from Northern Arizona University. He has a certified public manager certification from Arizona State University and is working on another credential, as a certified public financial officer.
He intends to keep on working and learning as much as he can, and “I’m very grateful for this opportunity that Susan has given me.”
Summers, the new chief information officer/ITS director, had taken the job on an interim basis when predecessor Ed Jin moved to Orange County, Calif., in June.
He’s now the man ultimately responsible for keeping about 1,000 desktops, laptops, tablets and other devices, along with all telephone systems, but Summers said it doesn’t really seem like a huge load to him.
“You know, I enjoy what I do, so I don’t feel like it’s really stressful, or I need a break from it. I enjoy what I do, I enjoy technology and I enjoy working with people,” he said. “And also trying to bridge those gaps.”
He took his initial college classes at AWC, eventually getting an undergraduate business degree from the University of Phoenix and a master’s in public administration from Grand Canyon University.
Summers has been working at the county 22 years, first handling computers for the juvenile justice center before moving over to the main IT office and working his way through the ranks. He became the deputy CIO in 2011.
And much like the finance department, his reaches into every crevice of county government, even though only about 800 of its 1,300 employees are assigned at least one computer device.
“The one thing about IT is that we work with everybody. So I wouldn’t really say there’s any part of any organization, not just the county, that IT would not have a strong footprint in,” he said.
The IT department has 27 employees and seven divisions: security, application, desktop, GIS, infrastructure, administration and service desk, keeping the employees broken down into small groups.
“That way you have people who specialize in certain things, like you want someone that’s really good in cybersecurity, physical security, different things to be in that particular role, instead of having them be a generalist with things, you have someone who specializes,” he said.
Besides the day-to-day maintenance task, Summers said his department is working on larger-scale projects like improving wifi in some county buildings, putting new phones into the juvenile justice center, and buying new election equipment, after malfunctions were reported from many of the county’s voting centers during last November’s election.
He said it doesn’t feel very different to have the CIO role without the “interim” qualifier in front of it, at least yet. “Not so much. I’ve worked in all different aspects of IT, this is just another chapter in the life, I guess. And I’m very grateful to be in the position.”