Public works director leaving for job in Port

Roger Strohm is going back to focus on just engineering, and he’s doing it closer to home.

The Port Washington resident who is the director of public works for the Village of Fredonia, is leaving to become a City of Port engineer.

“I look forward to working in Port, but I’m going to miss Fredonia. It was not an easy decision to apply for the job,” he said.

Fredonia’s Public Works Committee was expected to accept Strohm’s resignation on Wednesday, Sept. 14.

Strohm has been with the village for more than 10 years.

“Fredonia being a smaller community, I get to do a little bit of everything,” he said.

Strohm picked up experience in the operational side of things, as well as the planning and administrative categories.

His role had him running the wastewater treatment plant and the water plant.

“If we have a project going on in the field, sometimes I go and pick up a shovel,” he said. “There have been a lot of fun projects over the years.”

Strohm is proud of a number of undertakings he has overseen over the last decade.

“We’ve got Freedom Park mostly developed,” he said, adding the new fire department and new industrial park that is waiting to be filled.

“I’ll miss the excitement of businesses going in there. Those are imminent,” Strohm said.

Upgrades to the wastewater treatment plant were necessary to keep up with state Department of Natural Resources requirements.

“Putting clean water into the Milwaukee river is important to us,” Strohm said.

“People use that for swimming, fishing and canoeing.”

Fredonia wasn’t alone in that boat, he said.

“All the communities around here are dealing with plants significantly expanded or upgraded from Clean Water Act — 50 to 60 years ago. That’s a lot of old parts to be replaced,” he said.

Strohm said he will miss the people in Fredonia the most —”who I work with and in the community who I bump into.”

“It has just been a welcoming community, a community that likes to see growth and development happen.”

Strohm likes that he will be cutting a few minutes off his commute time.

“That’s one of the things I’ll be looking forward to — walking or biking in to work,” he said.

Before working for Fredonia, Strohm worked at Miller Engineers and Scientists in Sheboygan, and before that he helped design sewers and lift stations and worked in sanitary waste in Los Angeles.

He moved out west right after he graduated from college.

“It was a fun place to be at that time. You don’t have much in the way of commitments,” he said.

He moved back home because he and his wife at the time had one daughter with another child on the way.

Growing up, the Kimberly native was interested in construction work but his high school guidance counselor noticed Strohm was good in science and math and suggested he study engineering.

Strohm didn’t know what an engineer did back then, but he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s degree in civil engineering from California State University, Long Beach.

“It has been a good career for me,” Strohm said.