At the January 2016 meeting of the MSA Executive Board Randy Carnahan was elected to the position of E-Board Treasurer. Randy started his Public Works career in 1986 with Santa Barbara County in the Central Division as 1 of 5 crew members. Being short staffed allowed him to experience many aspects of road maintenance, from doing the hand work to learning how to operate the Motor Grader. After 9 years Randy was reassigned to the South Coast Maintenance Yard on the Tree Crew. This move gave him the opportunity to learn how to maintain our Urban Forest. It was also his first experience with the “political” scene. Randy states, “I had a great crew leader and he taught me how to interact with the public. He treated everyone with respect but added just enough of a sense of humor to calm down any situation”. Randy was given the opportunity to act as the Crew Leader during a large part of the time, due to his boss’s absence, which was a great experience. During his tenure in the South Coast he was exposed to the MSA and was able to attend a Conference in Ventura as one of the “Orange Shirts”. Randy enjoyed talking with the vendor’s and learning about new things. At the conference he met Bill Peterson from Statewide Safety and Supplies. “I believe he worked for someone else back then but to me he was always with Statewide”. “Bill encouraged me to become more involved and with the support of my Superintendent I attended a few of the Chapter meetings”. Since then Randy has been involved with the MSA ever since. During the same time, he started taking the Caltrans Maintenance Correspondence Courses, which gave him a better understanding of Road Maintenance and what was happening under the surface.
The opportunity to fill a Crew Leader Position became available in 2000, at the North County Road Maintenance Yard, and he jumped at the chance. Don Mason was the Supervisor and Randy had worked with him at the beginning of his career. Don taught him to slow down. Randy said, “I remember one day working on a paving job and he and another crew leader were watching me run back and forth trying to do everything. Don called me over and asked me whether I wanted to be the leader or the worker?.” Randy decided the later and learned to delegate and trust his coworkers. Don gave Randy the encouragement to attend classes through the “Employee University” sponsored by Santa Barbara County. These classes pertained to Leadership and self-improvement. This helped him to advance as a person and in his career. Don was very active in the MSA and encouraged Randy to continue participating with the local chapter. He attended most of the meetings and enjoyed the networking and friendships that he found. Due to a restructuring in the County, Randy was reassigned to the Central Maintenance area as a Maintenance Leader in the field. About a year later an opportunity to go into the office as a Maintenance Staff Leader back in the North County came up. Randy felt he had the required field experience but needed to learn the office side of things to be promoted. He was given that opportunity by Kurt Klucker, his Superintendent. Randy said, “not only was Kurt a great mentor but he was also real involved in MSA.” Randy started making it to every meeting and enjoyed some of the many training classes that were offered.
Bill Petersen had been the Treasurer of the Central Coast Chapter for many years and Randy was asked to take over the position in 2008. Randy said he enjoyed doing it and a couple years later the Chapter combined the Secretary and Treasurer positions and I took on both jobs. In January 2014 he was elected as a representative to the Executive Board. Randy stated, “Here I am now looking forward to the position of Treasurer on the Executive Board. I enjoy new challenges and will do my best in this position and look forward to working my way through the chairs on the Executive Board.”
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