Longtime city employee Vicki Hessong was chosen as the City of Edna’s 2025 Employee of the Year, announced Tuesday night during the city’s annual employee Christmas party.
The Employee of the Year is chosen by the city’s department heads.
Hessong, who handles utility billing, has played a critical role in the city’s transition from manual billing under the old system to real-time digital billing with the new water meters.
“It was a lot of work,” Hessong said. “It was a lot, but I had a lot of help in here, too. They helped a lot.”
While crews were installing the 2,400 new meters, Hessong had to take the existing account information and enter everything into the new system, a process that took about 30 minutes per meter. The new utility software allows customers to pay online and to see their water usage in real time, including unusual spikes that could signal problems.
City Manager Gary Broz said that Hessong’s can-do attitude, customer service, and hard work brought the new system online with as few hiccups as possible.
“Vicki has overcome her fear with working with the new software and new water meters, which has led to better customer service and reliability,” Broz said.
Now that the utility system is up and running, Hessong has begun keeping an eye on accounts and making phone calls when she notices something unusual on customer accounts.
“We’re getting notifications that they have leaks or something running, so I try to call them daily to just let them be aware that something might be going on so please check,” Hessong said. “The toilet might be running, or they might have left a faucet on. We catch it early since we’re able to now. Before, we weren’t able to. It would be like two months before we were able to catch it.
“A lot of people are really pleased that I’m calling, and some, you have a few that get ugly, but you have to keep on.”
The challenges of implementing new systems, along with occasional negative feedback, haven’t deterred her from serving the community.
“I enjoy my job,” Hessong said. “I enjoy the public. It’s a lot of hard work, but I enjoy what I do.”