The general manager for the Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency confirmed his retirement plans in a phone interview Monday, saying it was “the right time for that transition,” after 10 years at the helm.
Matt Stone made the announcement at Tuesday’s meeting of the agency’s governing board, and a statement from SCV Water posted online Monday indicated Steve Cole, the agency’s assistant general manager, would assume Stone’s role.
He plans to finish his current contract, which ends in July.
Stone said there’s “no learning curve there” referring to Cole’s ability to step in and lead, but he added that he wanted to give the agency time to plan for the transition, in the phone interview Monday. He also said it would give him more time to visit with family, which he was doing on Monday when the agency announced the news.
Stone considered the creation of SCV Water as probably the most significant accomplishment of his tenure over the past 10 years, praising the way the community came together behind the legislation by then-Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita.
Wilk authored Senate Bill 634, which led to the consolidation of Newhall County Water District and the Castaic Lake Water Agency, making SCV Water’s service area valleywide. But one of his first jobs entailed engaging the community about the merger.
“The stars were aligning, in terms of the local leadership wanting to turn to something maybe more constructive than suing each other,” he said, talking about the merger process, and how his previous experience with an agency merger helped. Part of his pitch was that he was coming in from out of the area to help make this new plan work, he said. “I’m just trying to take this thing that looks like a pretty good idea, figure out how to make it work well for the community, and it’s turned out, I think, very well in terms of how the organization functions.”
He also praised Cole as someone who’s been there to help guide throughout the process of creating the SCV Water Agency, which was a successor to the CLWA, which hired Stone in December 2015.
“He was around for the initial formation of the agency, right with the ad hoc committee and the two general managers basically working together for those two years before we actually became SCV Water, and since then,” Stone said. “And so, he knows the history. He knows our intentions to try to create a good, working culture and a very productive approach to problem solving and all that good stuff.”
Stone said there were some ongoing challenges, such as how the water agency has had to address contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, which have been a persistent problem in SCV wells. Stone credited SCV Water’s ability to serve as a “unified organization” as its ability to address these challenges “with very little disruption in (residents’) daily lives or in their water supply,” he said Monday.
“I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to serve this community and help establish SCV Water,” Stone’s statement read. “Finding the right time to retire in the larger context of one’s life is a balance of many factors, and it is an even greater challenge because I have enjoyed being a part of SCV Water and enjoy the people I work with so much. But I leave knowing the agency is strong, stable and positioned for continued success.”
