Tommy Muska retires after 12 years West mayor

“He was the right mayor in the right place at the right time, and he faced more during his first term in office than 99% of mayors will face in their entire career,” newly elected Mayor Dave Pratka said.

Muska started as a West City Council member in 2008 and became mayor in June 2011, less than two years before an explosion on April 17, 2013, at the West Fertilizer Co. left 15 people dead, injured more than 200 and destroyed more than 300 homes, along with schools, a rest home and businesses, including the neighborhood where Muska grew up.

Muska lost his own home in the explosion, said Joe Pustejovsky, a council member since November 2018 and newly selected mayor pro tem.

Pustejovsky has lived in West since the mid-1980s and saw the recovery effort after the explosion. His home was in another neighborhood, but he saw what the city did and what Muska led the residents to do.

“Tommy did an excellent job with what was thrown at him,” Pustejovsky said. “He was displaced and what he did to not only recover for himself and his own family but to lead the city to recovery was very admirable.”

It was an effort of the city as a whole, Muska said Monday, reflecting on his role after the explosion.

“It was the citizens that pulled this off,” Muska said. “I just was there. I was like a big cheerleader and I kept pushing them forward, and that was what I think a mayor is supposed to do.”

Pratka described it as Muska helping the residents, the city staff and the city council believe they could recover and inspiring them to do so.

It was not just himself in his role as a mayor, Muska said. It was him as a man who grew up in the neighborhood that got destroyed, a lifelong resident of West and the son of a former mayor, who served in the role from around 1975 to 1985.

“It was personal to me,” Muska said. “That’s what I’m getting at. It was personal to me to make sure that this place, this city, got back on its feet. And it did.”

Muska said the rebuilding was an eight-year process, getting federal and state grants, getting donations, getting money from lawsuits over the explosion itself and then carrying out all the rebuilding.

By the end of 2013, the city had 42 new homes in the process of being built and 180 building permits issued for repairs or remodeling. Several families had already moved into new homes built from the ground up after their old one was torn down.

Pratka, the new mayor who works as information technology manager at Sykora Family Ford in West, said he finds Muska’s leadership inspirational.

“People are leaving town to get an education and then returning to raise their kids here, and I attribute that to Tommy’s leadership,” Pratka said.

He said he learned quite a bit from Muska’s example and that Muska taught and mentored him about leadership.

“Tommy inspired me and helped me to believe that I could take on the duties and role of mayor. That’s why I ran for mayor,” Pratka said.

Muska acknowledges the city’s recovery efforts were about more than just securing funding. The city built a park and a memorial to the explosion victims, and there was more rebuilding and new building as well.

“We put in the memorial that was all funded by private funds and donations,” Muska said.

Also, the community center was recently remodeled. Muska said that not only is the city trying make the most of its frontage along Interstate 35 to bring in businesses, it is also seeing growth in neighborhoods and is in the process of expanding its wastewater treatment plant, a project initially slated to start just before the explosion.

“We now have five different (new or expanding) subdivisions going up in West, with a new school and so forth,” Muska said. “We’ve got a great economy here. We’ve got great people that live here.”

Muska said he went through most of his years on the city council and as mayor without even one new subdivision, and now there are five.

“That leads me to my other accomplishment, that I feel is very important, the update of the wastewater treatment plant,” Muska said of the $22 million project to renovate and expand the wastewater plant, doubling its capacity.

“It’s a massive undertaking and it’s being built as we speak,” he said. “It’s going to propel us way into the future.”

There is also the new $600,000 police station completed earlier this year, a project that started during Muska’s time as mayor.

Looking to the future, Muska said he will spend some time playing golf and traveling with his wife now that he has sold his insurance business and also retired as mayor.

“Also, I want to spend every first Tuesday doing something with my daughter,” Muska said. “For 15 years, I missed every first Tuesday with my wife and daughter, because that’s when the council meetings are held. Now, I want to do something with them on that night.”