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Mike Hackett loved Alamosa and became good at “shaking the trees” to get money for projects he felt the city needed, said Sam Mamet, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League.

Hackett, who was Alamosa city manager for 18 years, died July 31 at his home in Arcata, Calif. He was 58 and had suffered from cancer.

Hackett “could squeeze blood out of a turnip to get grant money for Alamosa and the valley,” Mamet said.

During his tenure, Alamosa bought 1,350 acres of land at the city’s edge. It is now wetlands and called Alamosa Ranch. The city got a levee built along the Rio Grande, got grant money for a wastewater treatment plant and built a senior-citizen center. At that time the city also built a pedestrian bridge across the Rio Grande and made downtown improvements.

The wetlands area was built by the Army Corps of Engineers and includes open space, trails, a wildlife habitat and water rights.

“He was a visionary, a good negotiator and instrumental in all the projects,” said Judy Engbert, the city clerk.

The city was “in budget trouble” when Hackett came aboard, “but he turned that around,” Engbert said. “He had an ability to hire good people.”

Hackett “was a wonderful, generous, kind, talented, bright person who could sometimes be cantankerous,” said Ted McNeilsmith, professor of sociology at Adams State College in Alamosa.

“He had his detractors because he could be brusque,” McNeilsmith said. But most of the time he took the criticism well “because he was a reasonable, rational, even-tempered guy.”

Mamet said Hackett was a person “who made things happen. He understood the characteristics of people, realized you can’t have an ego (in the city manager job), and he kept the trains running. He really cared about people.”

Hackett wrote songs and played several string instruments, including the bass guitar, banjo, mandolin and bouzouki, often playing in local groups.

Michael Martin Hackett was born in Youngstown, Ohio, on April 3, 1951. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Ohio University and master’s in public administration at the University of Dayton.

He worked in the city offices of La Junta and Boulder before moving to Alamosa in 1988. He left Alamosa in 2006 to be city manager in Arcata in northern California.

He and his first wife, Linda Nelson, had two children. In 1995 he married Terry Uyeki.

Besides her, he is survived by his daughter, Sarah Hackett Rieper of Loon Lake, Wash., and son, Sean Hackett of Spokane, Wash.; and his wife’s daughter, Brooke Bisel, and son, Robin Bisel, both of Mc Kinleyville, Calif.

Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com