FINDLAY, Ohio — A bit of a shakeup is in the near future for the city of Findlay.
Findlay Mayor Christina Muryn announced Tuesday morning that long-time administration member Paul Schmelzer will be leaving his position as the city of Findlay safety director to accept a position in the private sector.
Schmelzer oversees the police and fire departments.
Also, the current city Director of Public Service and Acting City Engineer Brian Thomas will return to the city's engineering department full time. The two open positions will be rejoined into a single Safety-Service director position to oversee all three departments.
That one position was split into two roles back in 2017.
"With that transition, I felt that it was a good opportunity to kind of bring that back to a safety service position and be able to raise the caliber of candidates that maybe will be interested in the position," Muryn said.
While serving as the city safety director with Muryn and the safety-service director under former Mayor Lydia Mihalik, Schmelzer was influential in establishing Findlay's 5-year capital budget and taking the city from a poor financial status to having a $13 million general fund balance.
"He brought an understanding of the private sector and asked good questions and challenged the way things were done while also understanding that we're stewards of the citizen's dollars, and we want to make sure that we are doing things the way that we would expect us to do them," Muryn said.
Muryn says that Schmelzer is planning on staying aboard the city of Findlay's administration until they have hired the next city safety-service director; which is expected to be by the end of this calendar year.