The City Dayton has hired Jerrod Barks as its Assistant City Administrator, a new position created by the Dayton City Council in July as part of a restructuring of administrative positions in the city.
For the past eight years, Barks has served as City Administrator for the City of Morgantown, a town of about 2,500 residents in Butler County, which is about 25 miles northwest of Bowling Green, Ky.
Barks has undergraduate and graduate degrees from Western Kentucky University, including a master’s degree in Public Administration in 2018. As Morgantown City Administrator, Barks developed and coordinated several capital-improvement and quality-of-life projects in the city and has been a central figure in Morgantown’s marketing and branding efforts and its social media presence.
Jerrod Barks
In 2017, the Kentucky League of Cities awarded Barks and the City of Morgantown with its “Enterprise City Award” for the City Renaissance Plan, which outlined the city’s efforts to improve downtown development, infrastructure, and quality of life in Morgantown.
The International City Manager’s Association also recognized Barks in its “Life, Well Run” initiative, which honors innovative city-management programs, for his work in creating and implementing an economic-recovery plan in Morgantown when one of its largest employers declared bankruptcy.
“We are very fortunate to be able to bring Jerrod Barks to the City of Dayton management team,” Dayton Mayor Ben Baker said. “Jerrod’s past work in the City of Morgantown clearly demonstrates that he is a natural problem solver who utilizes creative thinking and community engagement to make city government more efficient and effective and to improve the quality of life for all community members.”
Mayor Baker said that the statewide search he and City Administrator Jay Fossett conducted for the position generated several quality candidates, but based on Barks’ past experience, training, and success as a city administrator, Barks was clearly the top candidate for the job.
Fossett said that he sees Barks being actively involved in the city’s economic- and housing-development initiatives, city marketing efforts, budget development, and other administrative duties.
“In its strategic-planning process earlier this year, City Council made clear the strategic path it envisions for the City of Dayton and Jerrod’s skill sets are perfectly suited to assist both Mayor Baker and I in achieving those strategic goals,” Fossett said.
Barks, who moved into the City of Dayton from Morgantown this past weekend, started his new job Tuesday morning and attended his first City Council meeting later that night at 7 p.m.
“I’m very excited to join Team Dayton,” Barks said. “The work the current administration is undertaking is very impressive and I believe that I can utilize my past experience in city management to contribute to the community and achieve the city’s strategic goals. Although I’ve had a great experience and a lot of success in the City of Morgantown, I was at a point in my career where I was ready to relocate to a larger area with new and exciting challenges.”
