New city employee starts

City hall in Hill City has a new fish in its pond.

Tracy Fish is the newest employee at city hall, starting last month as the office assistant.

“I am...helping the finance office with organizing and filing and catching up on some things,” she said. “And I’m learning a lot, too.”

Fish was born in South Dakota and grew up in a small town south of Sioux Falls. She married into the military and had been away for some time. She and her husband had some land in Custer, and upon his retirement from the Army, they moved back here.

She said things are going well and, since she’s still new, she’s still learning the ropes.

Being back in South Dakota has been good, she said.

“I am excited to be back, I’m excited to be in the Midwest,” she said. “There’s definitely a different vibe. We have been all over the world, so to speak. But there’s just something about coming back home that’s nice.”

She said she was attracted to a small town where everyone knows everyone. Aside from growing up in a small town, she said her time as a military wife prepared her for working in a small town.

When with her husband, she said she would wind up seeing people she knows or, as she put it, people who know people.

“And so we kind of had  our own little world itself  when we left from small town South Dakota to the Army world,” Fish said. “But I think our last tour, I guess, kind of prepared us because we got to kind of witness some things within where we were stationed with the local government and we got to be kind of guests, so to speak, and witness how things happen and what goes on.”

She said she wanted to come back here and make this their community that they help because, as Fish put it, “this is now home.”

The staff at city hall has been great and has been helping her learn the ropes, she said.

Everyone — in both city hall and the community — has been very welcoming. People, she said, are just glad to see her.

“That goes back to that whole Midwest mindset,” she said. “It’s good to be back home.”

Even when visiting Hill City — where, Fish said, she would participate in anything that’s going on as a tourist — she got the perception that Hill City is a wonderful community.

One of the things she noticed now that she did not notice as a tourist visiting the city is not only how busy city hall is but how busy the Hill City Area Chamber of Commerce is.

The chamber, she said, does a great job of getting out there into the community and helping spread the message of everything that is going on within the city.

At the end of the day, though, Fish is excited to be a part of the Hill City team.

“I’m excited to be contributing,” she said. “I’m excited to be in the community. I’m excited to do my part.”