Last week marked the final days on the job for Ogden Public Services Director Jay Lowder before retiring.

Lowder, who held the public services director job for 14 years, actually began serving the city 37 and a half years ago.

“I was working for the Forest Service down on Boulder Mountain in the Dixie National Forest,” he told the Standard-Examiner ahead of his retirement. “At the time, it was kind of difficult and I noticed a job announcement in the paper. I applied, came up and started out being Ogden’s urban forester.”

Lowder said his work with Ogden only became more involved from there.

“I was urban forester for several years, and then I became the supervisor over the parks (department’s) urban forestry and structural area maintenance that took care of all the parks and all of the facilities in the parks and all the street trees and park trees,” he said.

Eventually, Lowder was named the director of public services, and he served in this capacity for nearly a decade and a half.

Lowder said the one thing that has stuck out the most is how progressive Ogden is as a municipality.

“I’m very proud that we moved at a tremendous speed faster than a lot of other municipalities and we’re always looking for solutions, not excuses,” he said. “It’s just a real neat environment to work in, being so progressive, because we get so much done. And I know some of the public still thinks we’ve got a lot of red tape and all that, but we function very uniquely as a municipality.”

He added that he’s impressed with how many services the city offers its citizens.

“It really helps you to take great pride in doing the best for your citizens that you possibly can,” he said. “Along with that, we’ve developed the Parkway Trail, the Centennial Trail, the East Bench Trail for the community, and its been well received.

However, Lowder said one of the biggest changes he’s seen in his time serving Ogden is the transformation of Historic 25th Street.

“We’ve been able to bring life back into the city,” he said. “When I first came here, 25th Street was dead; there were just a couple businesses on it. It’s vibrant now. The Junction is vibrant and things are really just moving forward. It’s really a neat community.”

He said one of the things he’s enjoyed most about working for the city is the people he’s worked with over the years.

“I never in my life thought I would be able to work for such a wonderful corporation with such talented and devoted employees,” he said. “They’re there to serve the public 24-7-365 and they’re very good quality people and I just never dreamt I’d be part of something like that.”

Lowder said he’s looking forward to using his retirement to get to a few items he hadn’t had time for.

“I’m going to do the normal, but I’m also going to enter the second phase of my life and do some things I’ve always wanted to do like pottery and get back to fishing and get my bass boat registered again — it hasn’t been registered in many years — and do some fishing with my grandson and just be more with my family,” he said.

Justin Anderson has been appointed by the City Council to take over the position of public services director.