FAIRMONT– On Monday, Fairmont’s Community Development Director, Pat Oman, resigned from his position with the city of Fairmont. Oman began working for the city in August of 2024 and just last week withdrew his candidacy for the city administrator position.

Oman was hired by former city administrator, Matt Skaret, who at the time said that the position wasn’t entirely new to Fairmont as the city used to have a director of planning services up until about six years ago.

The purpose of his original role was to provide better structure, organization and leadership to the community development department. With it, Oman was responsible for overseeing four departments including water resource, planning and zoning, code enforcement, economic development and building official.

However, just three months after Oman began, Skaret resigned from his role and Oman began to take on more duties.

Under his guidance, the city launched a lakes management committee and tightened up its rental ordinance. Oman also created a local housing trust fund and got RFPs (Request for Proposals) going for the Southern Minnesota Educational Campus (SMEC) building and a municipal owned cannabis store, among other projects.

Recently, Oman, who has over 10 years of both city and county administrator experience, had been one of three candidates the city council decided it wanted to do second round interviews with for the open city administrator position. However, last Wednesday, a few hours before a special meeting to offer the final candidate (Oman) the position, he withdrew.

In his resignation letter, Oman said he will do what he can to ensure a smooth transition and indicated that his last day of work will be Wednesday, Nov. 12.