SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — The City of Santa Cruz Public Works Department has been recognized with four awards by the American Public Works Association-Monterey Bay Chapter. The awards honor recently retired Department Director Mark Dettle as 2023 Person of the Year, Senior Professional Engineer Katie Stewart as 2023 Young Professional of the Year, and 2023 Awards of Merit were bestowed on the Highway 1/9 Intersection Improvements Project and the West Cliff Path Storm Damage Repair Project.
The 2023 Person of the Year Award recognizes Mark Dettle’s leadership and extensive range of public works projects that have greatly influenced the community and positively impacted the environment while providing uninterrupted essential and quality-of-life service to the people of Santa Cruz over more than two decades.
The 2023 Young Professional of the Year Award recognizes all it took for Katie Stewart to rise from Assistant Engineer in 2019 to Senior Professional Engineer in 2023. She enthusiastically manages the wastewater/storm water and landfill engineering teams and currently leads FEMA certification work for the San Lorenzo River levee.
The Award of Merit for the Highway 1/9 Intersection Improvements Project applauds the reconstructed intersection serving 85,000 daily direct users. The project has reduced vehicle delays, greenhouse gas air pollution and fuel consumption, and has improved connectivity, filling the gaps in the City’s sidewalk/pedestrian path network and the bicycle network.
The Award of Merit for the West Cliff Path Storm Damage Repair Project recognizes construction of a 120-foot bike/ped path supported on drilled piers located near the roadway along a portion of West Cliff Drive. The project addressed the erosion that had been exacerbated by the storms of February 2017 with funding from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and California Office of Emergency Services (CalOES).
The awards were presented by the American Public Works Association-Monterey Bay Chapter in Salinas at a ceremony on Wednesday evening.
