Deputy City Manager Bill Bartels

Deputy City Manager Bill Bartels, submitted a letter of resignation to Fillmore’s new City Manager Yvonne Quiring, Monday.

In an interview with the Ventura Star Bartels stated that he had been considering the move for more than a year. Reflecting on his appointment to deputy, he thought it “the highest honor to have been paid in terms of municipal government [having] support of the council during that transition period.”

A consultant to the city for 14 years, and deputy for nearly three, Bartels was appointed interim city manager following the resignation of City Manager Tom Ristau last year.

Bartels also stated that his time as deputy “has been an incredible, amazing experience. It reaffirms my belief in municipal government.” He also stated that he “hoped that my service has provided stability and continuity during this period of change.”

He had high praise for the city’s new city manager.

Bartels has accepted a job offer to teach music part time, and will be busy managing the family ranch in Bardsdale which they have farmed for more than a century.

Both City Manager Yvonne Quiring and Fillmore Mayor Patti Walker expressed their gratitude for Bartels’s work, Walker remarking that she appreciated his “stepping in to the thankless job of interim city manager."