THE FOLLOWING IS A NEWS-GAZETTE ARTICLE BY JENNIFER BAILEY
ABOVE: Changes are occurring in the city of Danville’s engineering division, located in the public works facility on Voorhees Street.
DANVILLE — The city of Danville has reorganized its engineering division after having difficulty hiring a new city engineer.
The city council this week approved the reorganization, which includes changing Public Works Director Dave Ruwe’s title to director of public works and engineering and increasing his salary to $150,000 a year, and naming Assistant City Engineer Eric Childers as acting engineer.
“The biggest thing is we have been without a city engineer for nearly one year,” Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. said.
Former City Engineer Sam Cole stepped down from his position in May.
Williams said the city worked with a “headhunter” and still was not able to find someone to fill the role.
“In talking with other cities, they’re having similar difficulties and doing a little bit of reorganization,” Williams said.
In addition, Childers recently indicated to city officials that he plans to retire within a year.
Williams said that forced the city to look at what to do next and whether it could move forward without a city engineer, especially with so many continuing infrastructure and road projects.
“We can’t stop,” Williams said about the projects.
The reorganization also involves dividing up duties, with Ruwe handling more of the financial side of the job, Williams said, including providing budget management for projects and overseeing capital improvement planning for streets and sewers.
One of the city’s current engineers, Justin Houston, who is licensed to stamp and sign off on engineering plans, will be trained as a deputy city engineer, the mayor said.
Other responsibilities will be given to Community Development Administrator Logan Cronk, engineering techs and others, Williams said.
The city plans to hire another engineer as soon as it can, he added. The engineering division currently has three engineers, and its budget can support a fourth.
“We have a year to get everybody in their new roles,” Williams said.
He said the reorganization and elimination of the city-engineer position saves the city more than $100,000, even including the salary increases.
“Salaries were adjusted accordingly,” Williams said. “It was able to be budget neutral.”
The council also approved adjustments to salary charts for city jobs that include increases based on longevity, with ranges of five to nine years, 10-14 years, 15-19 years and 20-plus years.
Williams said a past wage study that the city’s commissioned to bring salaries to “proper ranges” didn’t address this variable, resulting in some new hires getting higher salaries than those who had been with the city a long time.
“I didn’t think that was fair, and the council didn’t think that was fair,” he said.
For example, he said, factoring in police Chief Chris Yates’ longevity increased his salary from $144,364 to $162,913.
Williams said after the firing of Human Relations Administrator Sandra Finch last month, the city is updating description for that position and will soon make it available for applications.
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