COEUR d’ALENE — Just like many others, Sam Taylor said he left his hometown of Coeur d'Alene after college to pursue a career.

Taylor, 31, said it was hard to move away from his close-knit family and that, every time he would bring his wife and kids home on vacation, his brothers would ask when he was moving back. It wasn't as simple as just picking up and moving back, Taylor said, but he hoped in about 20 years he would be able to return to the Lake City with some sort of job in city government.

"Everything I've done, whether it was in journalism or public administration, was designed and intended to get back here someday somehow," Taylor said.

Prior to transitioning to the public sector, Taylor worked at five newspapers in Idaho and Washington. In the public sector, Taylor worked as the city clerk, community information officer and assistant city administrator in Ferndale, Wash., and was working as the deputy city manager for the City of Morro Bay in California, before the opportunity of a lifetime presented itself.

"I feel very, very fortunate that, through this very rigorous process they go through here I was selected and was able to get here far ahead of schedule," said Taylor, who was recently hired as the deputy city administrator in Coeur d'Alene. "This is literally my dream job, 100 percent"

Taylor began his new role on June 26. His responsibilities include internal and external communications, serving as city liaison to the Arts Commission and CDA 2030, the handling of parking issues, and assisting with the supervision of departments.

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What drew you to the communications field?

When I got to the University of Idaho, I started out as an English major because there are a lot of teachers in my family. Within two weeks I knew that the English program wasn't for me, I just wasn't interested in the culture of it.

At the same time I had noticed the school newspaper. I tried to write a review of a band and did horribly, it was embarrassing. But I thought I would go into the journalism program because I was pretty good at writing and it was still associated with language.

I just fell in love with it. I fell in love with hard news journalism and holding public officials accountable. I got very geeky about it and was that college student that found the home phone numbers for deans and all that.

From there, it just kind of kept going.

One day I was writing a story about how the mayor of Ferndale had violated the Open Meetings Act. He called me up and said 'You keep writing these stories about what we're doing wrong, why don't you come and help?'

So I did, I became a city clerk and community information officer and fell in love with accountability from the inside.

Did you ever really plan on transitioning into the public sector, or did you just truly fall into it?

I kind of just fell into it. It was a lot of things just lining up at once.

Our first child was born and he was born kind of sick. We were just stressed out thinking about how we were going to raise a family on a journalist’s salary.

I immediately doubled my pay and got an actual living wage. It was really fortuitous, the way it all happened. Even now I just don't even understand it. I just feel very fortunate.

I try to do my best and be helpful — that's my goal in life.

What is the most important aspect or quality of effective communications work?

For a community government, the most important thing that we can do is bring the community together and have a conversation. That's why I am such a big fan of social media. It's called social for a reason.

A lot of municipalities just post up weird press releases and don't do a good job linking them. They leave it at that and when people comment they don't get responses. I think we need to change that — when people reach out to us on our Twitter or Facebook page, we should talk back and give them the information they need.

We want to work to better educate the public so they have accurate information and better form an opinion about something.

My job is to provide good information for council members and the mayor so they can make their decisions. It's also providing the community with the same information so the council feels confident that the community has good information and when they're hearing from the community they can know that the opinions provided are based on good information. Hopefully that will lead to better decision making.

In an ideal world, how should communications between a city government and the community look and feel?

It's got to be a conversation. I really believe in a community conversation where it's not one sided and it's not just me giving the community information. It's really about providing them with information and receiving feedback. My job is to take that feedback to the staff so we are all aware of what the community is thinking. We can take the pulse of the community and then work on their behalf.

You talked about transparency and I think it's to the point with some folks where it's just a word a politician says without any action. What is true transparency in government?

It's about making sure we provide the community with a robust amount of information that is factually accurate. When there is a request to us, we need to get it to them as fast as we can. The city clerk's office does work really hard to make that happen and to make sure that they understand what the request is.

I think a big part of it is putting as much information as we can on the website so it's like a library to people — they can go on there and find out what they want to find out. I just want the community here to have direct access to information without anybody giving it to them and I think technology is allowing us to do that more and more.

Shifting away from talking about work, what does a great weekend look like in the life of Sam Taylor?

It really is all about family time. My priority is to spend time with my boys and my wife. Being back home is pretty awesome because we are spending a lot of time fishing at the Fernan dock like I did when I was a kid and going down to City Beach. Every weekend we have something going on.

Obviously when football season starts, the whole day is focused on the Seahawks.