Serving her hometown

For Margie Mueller, working for Jefferson City allows her to combine her interest in finance with her desire to give back to her hometown.

Mueller began as the city’s director of finance and information technology last month, coming from the Missouri Department of Conservation, where she served as chief financial officer. But her start in the field came from a part-time job with the Missouri Department of Revenue.

“I didn’t go to college right out of high school,” Mueller said. “I just started working … part-time at the Department of Revenue in the individual taxes.”

With her experience at the Department of Revenue, Mueller moved to a private CPA firm in Jefferson City to continue working in taxes, which is where she really began to get involved in accounting. From there, she went back to her work with the state, spending nearly 16 years working for the Missouri Department of Social Services dealing with Medicaid programs. In that work, she said, she began to work more in budgets. It’s also where she decided to go back to school.

Mueller said she began taking night classes at Columbia College, taking advantage of a tuition-reimbursement program. She said she was able to advance some of her coursework because of her previous experience in accounting and budgets, and eventually graduated with a degree in business administration with an emphasis in accounting.

In 2007, Mueller moved to the Missouri Alliance for Children and Families, serving as the chief financial officer and IT manager. Mueller said that was an interesting job, as the organization expanded rapidly and had never had a chief financial officer before her arrival.

“They expanded very quickly, and they needed someone,” Mueller said. “That was really good because it was the budget side, but it was also going back to the roots of the CPA side, doing the full accounting.”

In 2010, she again returned to work for the state, this time joining the Missouri Department of Conservation as administrative services division chief and chief financial officer. As the Department of Conservation has its own dedicated funding source and a four-member commission with oversight responsibilities, Mueller said it provided great experience for the environment she’s currently in, where she reports to the city administrator, the 10-member City Council and the mayor.

“It’s not like other state agencies,” Mueller said of Conservation. “There I got the experience of really working with what would be comparable to a council, a governing board, because that’s a different dynamic.”

In coming to work for the city, Mueller said she really liked the idea of continuing her public service for Jefferson City, where she has lived her entire life, and happened to see the opening right when she started looking for other opportunities.

“It was serendipitous,” Mueller said. “It was a great opportunity.”

She has now been at the city for a little more than one month and has found a lot of similarities to her previous jobs. She said she’s glad to be able to have started in March, allowing her to come in as the budget process for 2017 begins.

Department directors typically submit their budgets to the Finance Department in late April, and the city administrator begins his work in May. His budget is turned over to the mayor in June, and the mayor works on it until a draft is presented to the full City Council in late July.

“I get to start from the beginning of a budget cycle and go all the way through,” Mueller said.

And, she said, her work is made easier by the staff in both finance and IT.

“Even though it’s a small group in finance and IT, they’re very hard-working, professional people,” Mueller said. “They’ve been really helping me get up to speed.”

In her spare time, Mueller said she reads a lot, mostly fiction for enjoyment, and crochets blankets and other gifts for her grandchildren. She also enjoys golf.