It was kind of like homecoming last week for Mitch Bair, who just started a new job as Jefferson County’s director of County Services.
His first day on the job was July 11, replacing Eric Larson, who resigned in February to become executive director of the St. Louis-Jefferson Solid Waste Management District, a nonprofit agency that coordinates recycling efforts in Jefferson, St. Louis and St. Charles counties and St. Louis.
Bair, 50, said he spent his first week getting reacquainted with the people and places of his youth.
He is a 1991 St. Pius X High School graduate and grew up in the area south of Festus.
“It sounds strange to say it feels as if I never left, but it kind of does,” he said. “I’ve been busy, meeting old and new acquaintances.”
During his acclimation, he also oversaw a meeting of the county’s Planning and Zoning Commission. His first job out of college was as a planner for the county, so he mostly knew how those meetings work.
Back then, the P and Z board met in the County Courthouse rather than the Administrative Center, but Bair said many things from his previous two years in the county’s Planning Department were the same.
“It’s not in the same place, but the challenges are still the same, balancing fair land use with the rights of neighboring property owners,” he said. “It’s a different time and day, but people are the same. Plus, (planning commissioner) Mike Huskey is still on the board. Except he’s not wearing a sheriff’s deputy uniform anymore and he didn’t have a beard back then.”
Huskey, a retired deputy, is the lone remaining charter member of the P and Z board, which was formed in 1986.
As County Services director, Bair leads the Planning Division as well as animal control, code enforcement and solid waste and recycling for the county.
One of two finalists for the job, Bair is being paid a $110,000 annual salary.
Larson, who had worked for the county since June 2015, was being paid a $101,461 salary when he left.
County Executive Dennis Gannon said Bair’s extensive resume was impressive.
“All of his work in municipal and county government stood out,” Gannon said. “He’s led large departments, which has given him good experience. The Planning Division and code enforcement are not feel-good departments. You have to have some expertise to lead them.”
Bair has such experience.
In May, he resigned after working for eight years as city manager and economic development director for Collinsville, Ill., where he headed a city government of 400 employees with a $600 million budget.
“I thought the job had kind of played itself out,” Bair said of his resignation from that job. “There was a new mayor, and it seemed as if it was a time for a change of leadership. I was turning 50, and I felt it was a perfect time in my life to make a change as well.”
Before Bair was the Collinsville city manager and economic development director, he was that city’s community development director for more than eight years. In that job, he was in charge of land use decisions, planning and zoning, building inspections and code enforcement, which he said was similar to his duties in his new role for Jefferson County.
“That’s really where my heart is,” he said. “I’m a planner. As city manager, you get removed from the people you’re making decisions for to some extent. It will be nice to be more personally involved with those people again. This (new job) seems like a perfect fit for me at this point of life.”
After leaving Jefferson County government in 1999 and prior to his work at Collinsville, Bair was a city planner for Maryland Heights for eight and a half years.
While he said his heart is in planning, it wasn’t always that way.
“When I was young, my dream was to work for the FBI,” he said. “By the time I got to college (St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, where he played football and was on the track team), I figured that wasn’t going to happen, so I decided to go into law. But I decided that I didn’t want to do that, either.”
He said he was still undecided after he graduated from St. Ambrose.
“I figured I needed to get an MBA (master’s degree in business administration) because there’s not much you can do with a political science, philosophy and pre-law degree.”
At Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State) in Springfield, the planning bug hit him.
He said former County Commissioner Patrick Lamping, a family friend, helped him land his first job.
“He found out that I was looking for a job and the county needed a planner,” Bair said. “It was a great first job. We were working on a master plan at the time, and as I come back, we’re working on a new one. Some things don’t change very much.”
Gannon said Bair’s local ties also were attractive.
“This was one of the first places he worked coming out of college – and now he’s leading that same department,” Gannon said. “He grew up in Jefferson County, and some of his family is still here.”
Bair said he married his high school sweetheart, Janice, 25 years ago, and the two live in Oakville.
They have two daughters, Anna, 22, who attends and plays volleyball at the University of Mississippi, and Lauren, 18, who is preparing to depart for the University of Arkansas this fall.
“We’ll have kind of an empty nest,” Bair said. “That will be a new challenge.”
Bair said he’s eager to get past the orientation part of his new job.
“This county is full of opportunity,” he said. “There are great people here. It’s still going through the throes of development vs. preservation. It was like that in 1999, when we were processing 300-home subdivisions in the Seckman Valley, and it’s still like that today.
“This county will always be attractive to people moving out of St. Louis and St. Louis County, either because of the cost of living or they like the wide open places,” he said. “But at the same time, they still expect the same level of services that they got in St. Louis. I like to call that creative tension. But I think we can do it right if we listen to people. And that’s what I intend to do – hear from all voices.”