Alex Voigt, who has worked at the city of Aurora since 2010 and is now one of the city’s two deputy chiefs of staff, will serve out her last day on May 13.
That’s the day Mayor-elect John Laesch, alongside newly-elected and reelected members of the Aurora City Council, are set to be sworn into office.
Voigt told The Beacon-News it feels like a weird but right time since she will be leaving a place she loves surrounded by coworkers she loves.
“I feel very, very lucky to have had this job,” she said. “It’s been a lot of fun. Lots of highs, lots of lows.”
Voigt was first hired in 2010 under former Mayor Tom Weisner, but she didn’t get the job she originally applied for. Weisner himself called her to say she didn’t get the public information job she had interviewed for, she said, but he instead offered her a position as his assistant.
On that call, Weisner told her she would be better off getting a position that allowed her to “see and experience everything, which in the mayor’s office you do,” she said.
Although she has stayed in the mayor’s office the whole time she has worked at the city, Voigt said she also held a number of interim roles, including two stints as the interim city clerk and one as the emergency management coordinator.
Even in those interim roles, Voigt said she had to do double-duty and continue to do her job in the mayor’s office. In those roles, she continued to get promoted, she said, eventually landing her current position around 10 years ago.
Through her current role, Voigt said she helped to manage city departments, splitting them with the other deputy chief of staff, Maria Lindsay. Plus, she did a lot of work related to agendas for City Council and related committee meetings and worked with the city’s state and federal lobbyists, she said.
At an event honoring outgoing Mayor Richard Irvin and many from the mayor’s office on Tuesday night, Irvin said Voigt has been the “angel on all of our shoulders telling us to do the right thing.” She also gave the mayor’s office a “spirit of hard work, of dedication to the city,” and made sure things were done the way they were supposed to be done for city residents, he said.
Voigt said in her speech after Irvin’s that she genuinely appreciates the opportunities and trust Irvin gave her. She also said to Aurora city staff that there is “nobody better” and that she hopes the community recognizes everyone’s hard work and efforts.
It is her coworkers that Voigt is going to miss most from this job, she told The Beacon-News.
“I’ve worked with a lot of these people for a really long time, and in some cases, I feel like we’ve grown up professionally together,” she said.
Something she loved about her job was hearing from people throughout the city who had problems or ideas, and she was given a lot of freedom to address those things, she said.
That led to one of her proudest accomplishments, she said, which was helping to get legislation passed allowing the Aurora Police Department to use drones in certain circumstances, such as at public events.
“We spent, I mean, literally years,” Voigt said. “It was something that required a significant amount of work.”
The reason she is so proud of it, she said, is because it shines a light on the Aurora Police Department in a different way — they cared so deeply about preventing tragic events that they pushed for preventative measures.
It was also a proud moment for her because all of the relationships the city worked to build with elected officials paid off, she said.
Other things Voigt said she has been proud to be a part of in her time at the city are various ordinance amendments that have been passed, such as the update to the liquor code, and the city’s efforts to provide open data portals.
However, Voigt said it is “hugely disappointing” that she was unable to see the special census that the city was planning to undertake, which she started working on in 2021, through to the end. It was set to start earlier this year but was delayed by the federal government.
“That’s a bummer to say the least,” she said.
After 15 years, Voigt is now back in the job market, which she said is “a weird thing to say and be experiencing.” However, she is very fortunate, she said, that she got to be the one to make the choice.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
