On a recent morning last week, Ron Hill checked on some of the Portsmouth schools that serve as polling places.
“I wanted to make sure I get ahead of it,” said Hill, 67, the division’s senior supervisor of building services. He checked their lighting and cleanliness; he wanted to be sure each felt inviting. While at Lakeview Elementary, Hill popped out to check on the new playground. Though a certified inspector checks the completed structures, Hill likes to look at all the bolts himself to ensure there are no safety concerns.
Hill’s tendency to go beyond what the job calls for is one of the things that earned him the respect of higher-ups in the division. He started as a custodian for Portsmouth’s Olive Branch Preschool Center in 1991 when it was an elementary school. It wasn’t the job he applied for — he had his eye on a maintenance position— but he took it.
“I said, ‘Well, I just want to get my foot in and I’ll find a way to kind of move up.”
And move up he did. In September, he was put in charge of about 150 maintenance and custodial staff who oversee more than 20 buildings. Hill still has the note he wrote to himself early in his career, listing his goals. He wrote it down as an objective — leading the department — though he never thought it would happen.