Sweeny City Secretary Retires

Reatta Minshew, center, is joined by her parents, Sarah and Jimmie Stewart, at Minshew's retirement ceremony Dec. 6 at the Sweeny Community Center.
JEFFREY GOVIN/The Facts

The Facts
By SUSAN AVERA HOLT West Brazos Weekly
December 14, 2022

SWEENY - Reatta Minshew has been in her job so long, when someone calls Sweeny City Hall for the city secretary, the instructions are to “Press 3 to leave a message for Reatta.”

That message will have to be updated. After 26 years of service to the city, Minshew is retiring.

Minshew doesn’t have any big plans to travel or move away. She intends to stay right here, spending time with her husband, Tim, two daughters and five grandchildren. She’ll be attending West Oaks Church and looking for ways to keep caring for her neighbors, she said.

“I do love the residents. I do love helping them,” she said. “That was my purpose here — to help people.”

Her official last day is Thursday5. Sweeny City Manager Lindsay Koskiniemi said permit clerk Kaydi Smith will be taking over as city secretary effective Friday after City Council approved her hiring.

Minshew’s retirement party Dec. 7 at the Sweeny Community Center was full of people, food and well wishes. Family, city workers, friends and familiar faces made speeches and congratulated her on a job well done.

“Although I have worked with Ms. Reatta for a short time, I feel I have known Ms. Reatta for years,” Koskiniemi said. “I have enjoyed working with her, learning from her, and love the light she brings to City Hall with her servant heart and love for people. She will be sorely missed, but we wish her all the best in her retirement.”

Sweeny Fire and Rescue Chief Roger Barton has known Minshew for years.

“She was awesome to work with, very caring and very dedicated to her job,” he said. “She always did a good job, and she was there for everybody. It didn’t matter what department. She really cared about everybody. You never saw Reatta in a bad mood. She always took the time to help you.”

Minshew began working for the city in October 1996 when she answered a newspaper ad for a part-time position at City Hall. Minshew remembers the ladies at City Hall were impressed with her office skills, honed at Cottage Collectibles in Wild Peach and Intermedics in Angleton.

“I worked a 10-key, and I knew how to type, and I answered a lot of phones so I got the job,” she remembers. “The city manager was Exa Mae Keller, and my first job was to plan her retirement party.”

Minshew immediately began working full time because everyone at City Hall wanted to take vacation for Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Within a few weeks, she was the payroll clerk and front desk. She did that job from 1997-2004. When city secretary Tina Bernshausen left in 2004, Minshew stepped into that role.

The guiding principle at Sweeny City Hall was instilled by retired city manager Kenneth Lott. Minshew remembers learning from her more experienced co-workers that Lott’s daily greeting became the city slogan:

“Good morning, ladies. Remember, we are public servants. We are here to have compassion and help our city residents in any way that we can,” she recited.

During the February 2021 ice storm, Minshew remembers putting Lott’s slogan into practice.

“We lost water here,” she said. “One of the phone calls I got was a young mother, and she literally didn’t know what to do if water didn’t come out of her faucet. She was crying.”

Minshew had to explain step by step to the scared woman that she needed to go buy bottled water, heat it on the stove and use it to wash her baby’s face.

“What I’m learning as I’m leaving is this younger generation doesn’t have survival skills,” Minshew said.

She said the population of Sweeny is changing; the older generation is passing away and, with it, the niceties that make Sweeny such a special place to live.

“In the ’90s, if public utilities fixed a water leak, the whole neighborhood would be up here with cookies and thanking us,” Minshew said. “The old Sweeny is precious, but they’re dying off.”

Today, city workers get yelled at, cussed at and people feel entitled to services. They call City Hall wanting to know why their utilities were cut off when they’re behind on their payments, she said.

People need to step up and take responsibility, she said. Minshew and former city servant Becky Coker, years ago, began providing Christmas for families in Sweeny who were really hurting, through no fault of their own. Because of their jobs at City Hall, they knew the circumstances behind an unpaid water bill. She and Coker paid the bill, bought presents, provided the family with meals, and she has no plans to stop simply because she’s retired.

“I will continue to do that,” Minshew said. “I can still hear Mr. Lott saying, ‘We are public servants, and we are here to help people. I hope I did that well.’”