Council debates future of engineer position

    The Washington City Council dug deeply into its budget Wednesday night. The council looked at a few proposed cuts from the finance committee. One of those was to eliminate the city engineer?s position and replace him with contracted help. The city engineer is Rob McDonald. His salary is about $74,000 a year.

    Councilor Bob Shepherd said he was ?dead set? against removing the city engineer?s position.

    ?I don?t think it will cut costs,? he said. ?I think it will increase them. Working with a consultant is not the same as working with someone in our own department.?

    Councilor Mike Roth responded, ?Yeah, it probably would cost us more in the short-term, but in the long-term it would end up saving us money.?

    Roth said he realizes that the city needs a staffed engineer to work on upcoming projects such as the sewer plant, water tower and new well. However, he said that the city engineer?s position won?t be necessary after a couple of years when the engineering for those projects is done.

    ?Few cities of our size in Iowa staff an engineer,? said Roth. 

    Wilson-Johnson said she likes the convenience of a staffed engineer to answer her questions about streets.

    Mayor Johnson said now is not the time to eliminate the city engineer?s position.

    ?We?re only half done with South Ninth,? she said. ?We?ve got so many projects that are only about half-done. I?d be concerned if we didn?t have a local contact for those projects.?

    City Administrator Dave Plyman said the engineering costs for the sewer plant could run into the ?hundreds of thousands? of dollars. He said the city is trying to reduce costs by having as much of the engineering done in house, by its own engineers. Plyman said no single engineer is qualified to perform all of the tasks in a project as large as the sewer plant. The city will have to rely on outside help some of the time.

    Plyman also said that, if the city eliminates its engineer position, it will have to pay close attention to the contractors it hires. Supervising contractors is something the city engineer ordinarily does.

    ?A lot of times contractors criticize engineers because of the level of scrutiny they provide,? said Plyman. ?One cannot always assume contractors have the interests of the city at heart.?

    The council failed to come to a consensus on what to do about the engineering department.

    Another matter the council took up was the amount of money it gives to the Washington Economic Development Group (WEDG). The council agreed to reduce its donation to the group from $20,000 a year to $15,000. Shepherd disagreed with the decision, saying he did not want to ?cut the legs out from under WEDG.?

    Roth said he doesn?t want to undercut WEDG either, but felt that Washington is paying a disproportionate share of WEDG?s budget compared to the rest of the county. The other towns in the county collectively donate $7,000 toward WEDG. Roth said it?s time for the other towns in the county to ?pony up.?

    In an interview Thursday, WEDG director Ed Raber said less than half of his organization?s budget ? roughly $92,000 ? comes from local governments. The county government  contributes $19,000 to his budget. The rest comes from businesses and individuals. He also said that about three-quarters of his time is spent working on projects in the city of Washington.

For more, see our March 4 print edition.