Majority on council feel engineer staff position is needed

By Jim Young / jimyoungreporter@gmail.com

September 11, 2008 04:03 pm

— A Crossville City Council work session Monday was held at the request of councilman Jesse Kerley for the purpose of discussing combining the engineering and public works department.
Kerley's suggestion was to put former engineering department head Tim Begley, who is now the public works director, in charge of both departments. Begley has worked towards an engineering license but has not taken the final steps to become a fully licensed engineer.
City manager Ted Meadows addressed his concerns about the idea and said that he felt there was more work than a single person could do and adequately and still fulfill expected requirements of both jobs. He added that engineers do not always think like managers.
Meadows said that he felt the city engineer is a full time job if used properly. According to Meadows, there are 10 major projects on the city's plans that would need the skills an engineer would bring to oversee the projects and protect the taxpayers' interests including the very large project of raising the dam at Meadow Park Lake.
Meadows pointed out that so far this decade the city has had 26 projects costing over $25 million that included over $1 million of change orders. Meadows said that not all change orders are bad, but some could be avoided with better oversight. He also said that a $300,000 concession building at Centennial Park probably could have been done for less money with a city engineer to design it and a city construction crew to build it.
Other council members weighed in generally against the idea as well. Councilman Wyatt commented that he felt the public works director needed to be in the field and not in a city hall office.
Councilman Kerley said he just wanted to discuss the idea he had and that if the other council members were against it, then it was a dead issue.
Ted Meadows summed up the discussion by saying the city had found what he felt was a good match for the new city enegineer and Kerley's question had prompted him to do additional research into outsourcing more of the city services. Currently the city has a very successful contract with Veolia Water on the operation of the wastewater treatment plant. He added that many municipalities do much more with outside contractors and he would be looking at how cost savings might possible with all city departments except police and fire.