09/02/2008 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Council Minutes of 9/2/2008 and 2005 compazed to what we have currently. That is where he is coming up with the $200,000. She understands where he is saying that because she did tell Council in the committee meeting that last year was not really a representative yeaz. He was comparing the projected year end, and he wasn't looking at the outside architectural engineering that includes other engineering projects. He was just looking at the engineering costs. He was comparing the $304,000 projected year end of 2008 to the 2005 and 2004 $520,000. That's where he was looking at the $200,000 difference. Mayor O'Grady said he would emphasize it's in his mind and it's in the books. The last time we had an Engineering Department compared to what we've done this year, we're looking at a saving of $200,000. That Engineering Department was very much pazed down the way it was. If you go back to when we had a full Engineering Department, the savings are on the order of $350,000. You can't compare this yeaz to 2006 where we had no city engineer for a period or to 2007 when we were in the transition and still had a department but we outsourced the city engineer position. To do a pure direct comparison of city engineer, what we currently have versus full in-house engineering, the savings exceed $200,000. Councilman Gareau, chairperson of the Finance Committee: 1) The committee met on August 26, 2008. Present were Council President Kennedy, Councilman Ryan, committee member Councilman Barker, Councilman Jones, Councilman Orlowski, committee member Councilman Gazeau, committee member Council Kearney, and Councilman Mahoney; Finance Director Copfer, Safety Director Dr. Thomas, Human Resources Director Farver, Sharon Schlemmer from the WWTP. Three pieces of legislation were discussed: • Ord. 2008-104, an ordinance amending the organizational chart of the WWTP section of the Division of Public Works in the Department of Public Service in order to deliver services from the said division in a more efficient and economical manner and declaring an emergency as amended. This was abring-back; it had been previously discussed in the Finance Committee. At the first discussion, the committee requested some additional information by way of the pay range and pay rates to be implemented. The following piece of legislation to be discussed is the companion piece of legislation setting the pay ranges. This effort is a result of the ATS engineering study that was undertaken in the course of the past several years, and it is part of the reorganization of the WWTP facility. Our superintendent felt this was going to take a little bit of time to determine whether or not the current organizational chart as is being implemented would work because it is involved with people merging job responsibilities. It's going to take a little bit of time to ensure that it is going to work. She said employees were being very proactive and going out and taking the responsibilities seriously and being diligent and aggressive in how they were going to attack all these new responsibilities, and that was encouraging. She did put the caveat out there that it would be a little more time to find out whether or not some of these particular changes would actually work best. In committee, Councilman Gazeau made the motion to recommend approval as amended. The motion was seconded by 6