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Celebrate SDOT Workers: Part 3—Cliserio Bonilla

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. In honor of the holiday and our hard working employees, we are using the next few Fridays to blog about them. Continue reading to learn about Cliserio Bonilla, Senior Grounds Equipment Mechanic.

Bonilla moved to Seattle from Nayarit, Mexico and has worked at the SDOT for 18 years. Originally, he started as general labor, next moving into SDOT’s mowing crews and ultimately finding a home with our irrigation crews in Urban Forestry.

When we visited Bonilla, he and two other co-workers were assessing a break in the irrigation system along a portion of Westlake Avenue N in the South Lake Union neighborhood. Bonilla was determining the most cost effective, yet safe way to fix it. Part of his job is to ensure the city’s irrigation systems work well and that repairs do not present trip hazards or other safety issues. The second consideration is when to do the work. Minimizing disruptions to traffic is important as is avoiding difficulties caused by parked cars. Occasionally Bonilla recommends starting at 3 or 4 a.m. just to work around these challenges…even though he commutes from Mount Vernon! He also contributes to designing irrigation systems for new projects and helps manages an inventory of devices and brands used.

We’ve been having a great time getting to know people from all around SDOT. If you’ve read the blog posts on David Leask or Theresa Smith, you’ll know we ask each person if they were going to sing Karaoke what song would they sing. Bonilla offered that he would prefer a song with minimal lyrics and that it would have to be romantic, for example Besame Mucho.

Thanks for all you do, Cliserio!