LAMORINDA WEEKLY | Orinda celebrates city's longest serving employee, Jennie Flores


From left: Jennie Flores, Vice Mayor Darlene Gee, Council Member Brandyn Iverson, Council Member Janet Riley, and Mayor Inga Miller Photo Alison Burns

Three former Mayors lined up at last week's Council Meeting to take turns singing the praises of Jennie Flores as she celebrated three and a half decades of working with the city of Orinda, while the current Mayor, Inga Miller, presented Flores with an enormous bouquet of flowers.

Jennie Flores is the city's longest-serving employee . ever.

It was August 1988, and Orinda was just three years into city incorporation, when Flores joined the city's Finance Department as an accounting clerk, later being promoted to the position of Accounting Technician lll. Since then, she has primarily been in charge of the city's accounts payable function where, it is reckoned, she has processed over 80,000 checks.

Miller also presented Flores with a Proclamation from the city, which heaped even more praise on Orinda's 35-year veteran with words like "unfailing service and loyalty, thorough, reliable," and "always willing to help."

The Proclamation also estimated that since starting work in Orinda's City Accounts Department, Flores has made more than 8,000 BART journeys from her home in Pleasant Hill to her desk at City Hall.

In addition to her own tribute, former mayor Bobbie Landers read out a letter from Tom Sinclair, Orinda's first city manager following its 1985 incorporation, in which he told Flores that her "gentle ways, enduring smile and friendly demeanor are what define you."

All agreed with the City Proclamation that, "Jenny is the rock at the base of the foundation of our city government."