News Releases

Owens Grad Josh Hartbarger Named Maumee City Administrator After Career of Public Service

Owens alumni Josh Hartbarger was named city administrator for the City of Maumee in June.

Josh Hartbarger has built his life on public service and civic duty, taking him from northwest Ohio all the way to Antarctica and back again.

The new city administrator and director of public safety for the City of Maumee can trace many influences that helped him land where he is, but it was his time at Owens Community College that solidified his adult path.

“Without that foundation at Owens, without those instructors actually taking the time to help me be a good student … I never would have went on for anything else,” Hartbarger said. “I owe Owens a lot.”

Hartbarger graduated from Owens in 2005 with an Associate of Arts General Concentration. He eventually added a bachelor’s degree from Bowling Green State University and a master’s degree from Ohio University.

While growing up in Whitehouse, Hartbarger had a fire lit inside of him after a guidance counselor said his “path wasn’t in college,” and it grew into a good-natured desire to prove that counselor wrong.

His path to public service started in third grade, when his teacher, Barbara Smigelski, had her class get involved in efforts to bring a public library to Whitehouse. Hartbarger still uses lessons Smigelski instilled in him — to build bridges and be the person who tries to fix situations.

He worked for his father’s business after high school, and it was his father, Rory Hartbarger, who convinced him to give Owens a shot while working. Hartbarger immediately felt at home at Owens, “like I could do anything I really wanted to do.”

“It was a welcoming campus,” Hartbarger said. “Almost every class I had, I remember instructors just wanting to help. … Math is not my greatest subject, but my math instructor took the extra time and made sure I understood all of the resources available to me.”

While studying at Owens, Hartbarger served as a volunteer firefighter in Whitehouse. After graduation, he was presented with the opportunity to work for Raytheon Polar Services in Antarctica. He spent six months on the continent and ended up leading building inspections for the group, traveling to the South Pole base to work as well.

“It was the opportunity of a lifetime,” he said.

That passion for civic duty was only fanned when he came to Owens and was influenced by former political science professor Jarvis Gamble and Dermot Forde, who re-initiated student government during Hartbarger’s time. In fact, Hartbarger served as student government president at Owens.

“When you talk about mentors in your life, he really connected the dots of wanting to serve people,” Hartbarger said of Forde. “The things that Owens involved us in too was perfect. … They really wanted to have student involvement. You had people there that helped influence that sense of serving others.”

He took those lessons and passion to a 25-year career with the Village of Whitehouse, rising from an inspector to fire chief to deputy administrator and operations officer.

Hartbarger took a leap into the unknown when he started with Maumee in June. He boiled the multitude of functions his job serves to ensuring all government services function appropriately and efficiently.

Hartbarger has been happy with his decision to leave the comfort of Whitehouse for an unknown in Maumee, saying “the residents have been great, the businesses and employees have been great.”

And every day in his career, Hartbarger can be sure to reflect upon the lessons he learned in Mrs. Smigelski’s third-grade class or the classrooms at Owens.

“If you get dismissed, you wonder why you even wasted your time, but when someone listens, even if it’s not the news you wanted, at least someone took the time and listened,” Hartbarger said. “Usually what I’ve found, when you actively listen and try to come up with a common solution, you can come up with some pretty creative solutions to problems.”