Looks forward to playing outside, unconfined by the rigid schedule of a 53-year career
By Jack Reaney ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Marlene Kennedy calls her retirement “kind of an impulse decision.”
Her coworker of 27 years at the Big Sky County Water and Sewer District, Jim Muscat, retired in August. He joked then that she wouldn’t be able to stick around the office long without him. She ran into Muscat on Dec. 16, and he asked when Kennedy, 67, was going to call it quits. Muscat told her she wouldn’t regret the decision.
“That was on a Saturday. And then that Monday, I decided to retire,” Kennedy told EBS in an Dec. 28 interview. She clocked out from her administrative assistant role on Dec. 29.
“I’m an impulse person. And a ‘go with the flow’ person,” she said. If so, the flow has been consistent—it kept her in the same job since July of 1996.
Kennedy was born and raised in Montana. She spent her early years near the Canadian border in the rural Hi-Line farming community of Zurich, and moved to Whitefish for most of her schooling years.
She held jobs in Kalispell and Whitefish, but for longer in Helena, working for the State of Montana’s Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, among other jobs, for 17 years. She ran a small resource library for special needs providers before moving to Big Sky in 1993.
Kennedy and her husband, Jim Schultz, migrated from Helena so Schultz could take a job with Biggerstaff Construction, and Kennedy took an office job with the Big Sky Owners Association. By the early 1990s, Big Sky had not yet formed a water and sewer district. However, the community was outgrowing its original water and sewer infrastructure owned and operated by Big Sky Resort and Rural Improvement District #305—in 1993, pond leakage caused a moratorium on new sewer permits—and a committee would meet at the BSOA office every week to discuss forming a district. Kennedy would organize the committee meetings.
It was an honor for Kennedy to carry the community forward as she began her role with the young water and sewer district in 1996. She’s been answering the phone ever since.
Kennedy was already exploring the financial possibility of retirement before Muscat’s added influence. On Dec. 14, she met with her financial advisor. He asked, “Why are you still working?”
As an active individual, Kennedy looks forward to an open calendar—not needing to schedule skiing, snowshoeing, hiking and kayaking around her job. She jokes that she should have retired in time for last winter’s snow, and knows she will “cherish the play hours” more than she’ll ever regret leaving her desk.
“Holy cow. I’ve been working probably 53 years of my life, and [I’ve] always had to have [my] ‘me time’… scheduled around a job,” Kennedy said. Now she looks forward to longer and more frequent journeys with her hiking friends, longer stays at Flathead Lake.
The front face
Since joining the district, Kennedy’s job has revolved around customer support and communication. She’s been “the front face” of BSCWSD for almost three decades, according to district GM Ron Edwards.
“She’s synonymous with the water and sewer district,” Edwards said. “It’s been a good, long run for her.”
“I’ve always really loved interacting with my customers… Many people over the years that now are my friends, started out as customers,” Kennedy said. She appreciates—and feels appreciated by—customers and is proud of always making efforts to help them. She said Big Sky has always been generous, a “very giving community.”
“So, if you’re getting ready to leave at 5:10, you have your coat on and the phone rings? I still answer it. I’m here,” Kennedy said.
In the past three or four years, the district adopted software called WaterSmart—it provides homeowners with real-time water usage data and alerts. Edwards is proud that Big Sky leads the country in WaterSmart adoption rate, and credits Kennedy for registering customers and guiding them through.
Edwards said the national benchmark is around 20% adoption, but 50% of Big Sky’s customer base is enrolled in the free program.
“We have quarterly meetings with the WaterSmart folks,” Edwards said. “And they’re always telling us, they’re like, ‘We don’t know what you guys are doing, but you’re crushing it as far as getting people enrolled into it,’ and [Marlene’s] the one that’s been doing all that.”
When customers receive an automated WaterSmart message, it’s signed by Marlene.
“Most owners don’t understand the volume of water that can be used in such a short amount of time, like, for instance, a toilet running,” she said. Summer irrigation is another massive draw and sometimes requires Kennedy to explain why a customer’s water bill is so high.
That was her responsibility before WaterSmart, too, but the software has helped prevent those difficult phone calls from needing to happen.
“You can actually pinpoint the exact hour when the issue started, and if it was fixed, and how much it cost them for that time period,” Kennedy said.
Beyond customer service, Edwards also credits Kennedy for handling paperwork for water and sewer hookup permits. Aside from large commercial projects, new connections likely passed through her front desk.
Kennedy and Schultz moved from Big Sky to Gallatin Gateway before their daughter Hallie was born—Big Sky lacked medical resources in 1994—and Kennedy plans to stay there. She remembers Big Sky being more close-knit in years past, but she said it remains that way in some regards. Big Sky was built on volunteerism and that still applies today, she added.
“It would have been, in my mind, wonderful if there had been a vision of the future on what maximum growth should be here. I don’t know if that’s ever really been identified yet,” Kennedy said. Muscat offered similar “parental caution” to EBS back in August.
From Kennedy’s 27 years working in Big Sky, she’ll miss the water and sewer district’s customers. “It’s very gratifying to me to be able to help people. And so I will miss that… daily contact with many people,” she said.
Speaking with EBS before her ultimate Friday, she shared one part of the job she won’t miss—also the last thing she’d left to finish.
“Permits,” Kennedy said. “Water and sewer permits.”
“She hates ‘em,” Edwards said. But for hundreds of homes built in the past 27 years, Marlene got the job done regardless.
