Harris Township manager will leave for another Centre County municipal leadership role
Patton Township has selected its new manager — and they didn’t have to look very far.
Amy Farkas, who has been manager of Harris Township for 17 years, will be Patton Township’s next manager, the township announced in a press release Tuesday. The board of supervisors will officially appoint Farkas to the role during its meeting Wednesday.
Farkas will start her position at Patton Township on May 8, replacing the current manager, Doug Erickson. After 25 years with the township, Erickson announced his retirement plans in September.
“I’m very excited for the opportunity. I’m also very grateful to the Harris Township Board of Supervisors. They supported me professionally through every opportunity that I took. … I will just forever be grateful to them for that,” Farkas said during a phone interview.
Frank Harden, chair of the Harris Township Board of Supervisors, said Farkas has been a great asset to the township and has helped the township achieve a lot.
“She has been a resource for the Supervisors and her (advice) has been accurate and welcomed. She has always stayed apolitical in in very changing political atmosphere. She will be hard to replace and will be missed,” Harden wrote in an email.
Leaving Harris Township wasn’t an easy decision for Farkas.
“My board and our staff and our residents have been wonderful to work with. But I’ve just reached a point in my career where I’ve done a lot of great things here, but I’m ready to kind of spread my wings a little bit and go to a bigger place,” Farkas said. “I love living in the Centre Region, so I knew I didn’t really want to leave this area. So Patton Township seemed like a very good fit. Their board is great, their staff is great, and just through the whole interview process, I just felt that that was a very good fit for me professionally.”
When she started at Harris Township in 2005, about 4,600 people lived there. During her time as manager, the township was the fastest growing municipality for several years, a new maintenance facility — the largest capital project it’s ever done — was built, and the township had “a very firm financial footing,” she said, due to fund balance and structurally balanced budget policies.
“We’ve kind of grown leaps and bounds but we’ve grown with intention and purpose because our board and our planning commission and our residents really set the course for how we wanted to grow,” Farkas said. “Being a manager in a small community like Harris, you wear every hat and I’ve enjoyed wearing every hat because I’ve gotten to touch so many different aspects of the operation.”
It will be a challenging transition for her to go from being “the manager that wore 17 hats” to having 50 staff members who all play different roles, she said.
Patton also has 10,000 more residents than Harris and she wants to spend time getting to know the community. Harris Township did a good job at community engagement, she said, and she wants to see how she can translate that to Patton Township and better engage their residents.
At Patton Township, Farkas will oversee the day-to-day operations of the township staff and will implement the policies of the board of supervisors, according to the press release. Patton Township has 50 employees throughout four departments: police; public works operations; administration and finance; and engineering, planning and zoning. The township has an annual budget in excess of $12 million, the release states.
As for Harris Township’s next steps, Harden said the board will have an executive session Monday to discuss their options and hopes to come out of that meeting with a plan.
Farkas has a master’s degree in public administration from Penn State Harrisburg. She previously served as president of the Association for Pennsylvania Municipal Management and is currently on the board of the Pennsylvania Municipal League.
This story was originally published March 7, 2023 at 5:38 PM.
