Agenda - Council Work Session - 05/27/2025

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existing staff, when possible. As anticipated and noted herein, the City's needs are such that staff recommend following through with the planned 2026 restructuring. In summary, staff recommend eliminating the dual role of Public Works Director/City Engineer, creating a Public Works Director position and reclassifying Bruce Westby to this position to serve as department head over Public Works, and re-establishing a City Engineer to serve as department head over Engineering. This change would add 0.5 FTE to both Public Works and Engineering starting in 2026. Staff also recommend the following changes in Engineering to support this restructuring. Hire a new City Engineer. Based on current staffing goals and needs, staff recommend budgeting for and preparing for a City Engineer recruitment with a proposed start date of March 1, 2026. This position would be the Department Head of the Engineering Department and would benefit from institutional knowledge from Public Works Director Bruce Westby. Additional transitional support would be provided from Assistant City Engineer Joe Feriancek, who is well established in his role and wishes to continue in this role for a while longer, with potential duty revisions over time. Other Engineering staff will also support the new City Engineer as follows. Engineering Technician III Logan Czech, who is supervised by the Assistant City Engineer, primarily designs and prepares plans and specifications for Pavement Management Program projects, along with other office related tasks. No changes are currently proposed to this position for 2026. As outlined in a consent agenda case on tonight's Council agenda, a new Water Resources Technician position is proposed to be hired in 2025 to handle all water resources related tasks in the Engineering Department, which was driven by the recent retirement of the Civil Engineer IV position. Hiring the Water Resources Technician would maintain the FTE's as budgeted in engineering for 2025. A request for a new Engineering Technician II is included in Engineering's 2026 budget requests to provide additional assistance with office related tasks, as well as assisting with field inspections on improvement projects, as needed. This new position would add 1 FTE to Engineering in early 2026. No changes are proposed to the Engineering Administrative Assistant position, or to the three existing field inspections staff. If all positions described herein are implemented, the Engineering Department would increase from 7.5 FTEs currently to 9 FTEs in 2026. However, it should be noted that Mr. Westby was reclassified to the dual role prior to the 2023 influx of Pavement Management Program funding. Following the influx of funding, an additional project inspector was added bringing Engineering to a staff level of 7.5 FTEs. Funding Source: New staff costs would be partially funded through Pavement Management Program funds, Stormwater funds, Sewer and Water funds, and private development funds. While the workload for these positions already existed, levy constraints and staffing needs in other departments prevented these requests from being processed. To help meet work load requirements, engineering staff utilized contracted services from private engineering firms. If the staff requests outlined herein are approved as proposed, Engineering's contracted services budget could be significantly reduced. Recommendation: To provide consensus direction to begin budgeting for the 2026 restructure and to prepare for a City Engineer recruitment. Outcome/Action: Based on discussion.