Bobby Knox: Malden’s forever ‘go-to’ guy moves on to new post in Everett

Longtime Malden DPW Director departs for new role as Everett’s Executive Director of City Services

By Steve Freker

One of Malden’s most well-known — and most well-liked — citizens is “just changing jobs, nothing else.” He wants to make that perfectly clear. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says emphatically.

That generates one very small sigh of relief from lots of Maldonians, stretching all across the city from the Malden-Medford city line at Immaculate Conception Church to the other side of Route 1 where Malden meets Revere. But, alas, that only covers the future of where he will be residing. Unfortunately, nothing will diminish the dismay that arose around the city this past November when it was learned that longtime Malden Department of Public Works Director Bobby Knox would be departing this city to take a new, similar post with the City of Everett.

All of the many, spirited “No ways!” quickly morphed into lots of more muted “Oh, wows” when the original rumors were confirmed: “He really is leaving,” Malden residents mused, acceptingly, but far from agreeably.

Back to the center of the big news, again he tried to soften the blow. “I’m a Malden guy, I will always be a Malden guy, that’s the truth,” Knox told The Advocate last Friday in the midst of his last official day on the job, January 30, in the 33rd year of his employment with the City of Malden.

At 6:30 a.m. on Monday this week, Knox was in his office at 19 Norman St. in the burgeoning Everett Riverfront District, in his new post as Everett’s Executive Director of City Services. Just like that, the switch was made.

Again, Knox made some points very clear, regarding both the 33 years he has spent on Commercial Street at the Malden DPW Yard — first assisting in supervising operations in the DPW, then becoming DPW Director for about the last 20 years — and now the excitement over the new challenge with his post in Everett. “Malden’s been great to me and I never planned on not retiring from this city,” Knox told The Advocate. “I have been very happy here working closely with Mayor Christenson and his staff and [former] Mayor Howard in the past.”

For all of the past 33 years in Malden, Bobby Knox has been Malden’s forever “go-to” guy, accessible to more people than he would even care to admit. Check out the over 3,300 contacts in his cellphone, that’s three thousand, three hundred-plus, ladies and gentlemen. Too many people — way too many people — have his cellphone number, and an equal surplus of those people feel free to text or phone him, day and night (and in between) with requests big and small.

So now all of that is going away, in a southeasterly direction to Everett. But how did this all really come about? As in many situations such as these, the other question often becomes, what could have been done “to keep him here.”

That being said, Knox revealed that through the years he has “been approached by numerous communities” offering various positions, some which came with higher salary numbers as well. “The Director of Revere Public Works was a job I was offered, but the timing was not something I was seeking and it was also a lateral offer,” Knox recalled. “I never would be considering taking the same job I had in Malden for another job elsewhere, even for a higher salary.”

Not so with the position in Everett, which ultimately ended with that next-door community getting their man.

Knox told The Advocate how it all came about. “Two days after the election in November a representative of [Mayor-elect Robert Van Campen] contacted me and asked if I was interested in having a discussion with him.”

“I didn’t know [Van Campen] at all, but I was invited to meet the Mayor and have coffee, so I did that the next day,” Knox recalled. “We ended up talking for about an hour and a half, everything about public works, water & sewer, streets, parks, engineering, all of it — soup to nuts.”

“We agreed to talk again and around the middle of November, after some more discussion, [then Mayor-elect Van Campen] made me an offer,” Knox said. “Considering the timetable, I was given [a job] offer on a Wednesday, but only had until Monday to accept it.”

“I will say I had all sleepless nights over that weekend. But on that Monday I did accept the offer to become Everett’s Director of City Services,” Knox recalled.

Though the new post does come with a higher salary than his now former Malden job, it is certainly no lateral move; the responsibilities of his new position are expansive, as the hierarchy for management of Everett’s infrastructure and day-to-day related services differs in one key way: The post of Executive Director of City Services does not exist in the City of Malden. As Everett’s Executive Director of City Services, Knox will supervise all the following departments: Department of Public Works, Public Facilities, Engineering, Water & Sewer, Parks, Cemeteries — all of it. In Malden, all of those separate departments have their own directors and all report to the Mayor. The other key difference is that Knox, for the first time in 33 years, is not “on call” for “24/7” day in and day out as — everyone in Malden knows full well — he has been since the early 1990s, when he first began working at Malden DPW.

This week, Everett Executive Director of City Services Bobby Knox worked a straight shift of Monday-Friday, 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Quite frankly, for Knox, this was a revelation, seeing as it was “normal hours” for the first time in his professional life. Nothing this weekend, either, only watching his son’s hockey game or practice and driving his daughter wherever she might need to go.

As for Malden, the Interim DPW Director is Paul Myers, who has served as Assistant DPW Director/Director or Operations for the past nine years in Malden, after 15 years in a similar position in Brookline. He has worked alongside Knox for quite a few years, including during the recent, record-setting snowstorm of January 25, which dumped 23 inches of snow in Malden, closing schools for two days and signalling the first snow emergency since 2022.

What Knox said he will take with him as he changes jobs will be cherished memories and terrific relationships he has formed with countless people in Malden and beyond. “It’s been a good ride, an excellent ride,” Knox said. “I’ve met a lot of great people, created some fantastic relationships and I think I have helped face and resolve a lot of issues over the years.”

“I’ve always been a people person, it’s part of who I am,” Knox added.

As so many Malden residents have readily attested through the years and will say to this day, now former Malden DPW Director Bobby Knox always put the city of Malden first.

Now it is Everett’s turn.