The reorganization of the city’s Department of Public Works and water distribution system staff has been implemented, and the city aims to increase production immediately and save money — over $100,000 in 2013.
Commissioner Frank D. Tallarino Jr. remains at the head of a department that controls about 42 percent of the city’s $41.2 million budget, from street maintenance to snow removal to the water distribution system.
The second-in-command will now be engineer Matt Keller, with engineers George Ferguson and Eric Seifert below him in Engineering. Mayor Joseph R. Fusco Jr. said Keller was chosen for the post because he has the proper required licensing for operating a water distribution system — the only license holder the city has.
The superintendent of streets is Joseph Guiliano, who answers to Keller. Anthony Nash will be superintendent of water and sewer distribution, and will also answer to Keller.
Below Guiliano for streets will be labor foreman William Tallarino, the commissioner’s brother, and working supervisor Thomas Jones, who moves from his position as city forester. "We’re basically eliminating the Forestry Department," Fusco said. "We’re basically going back to how it was 20 years ago." Jones, he said, will also have Streets responsibilities in addition to his forester role.
Nash will now focus on water and sewer, said Tallarino, including overseeing a new effort to improve the water meter program, including tracking such factors as age and accuracy. It will be, Tallarino said, "a formal verification and replacement program."
"The goal is a more productive, more self-sufficient work force," said the mayor. "We’re going to get more work out of them." Fusco and Brandon Lovett, director of administrative services, both noted that the changes have been reviewed and approved by the local Civil Service Commission and the related city unions. Guiliano, Nash, Jones and William Tallarino will remain Civil Service Employees Association members.
Guiliano and Jones will be getting more pay, because they will be working eight-hour days compared to the seven-hour days they’d been working in their previous roles. That means Guiliano’s salary will be adjusted from $56,652 to $65,738 and Jones will bump from $44,966 to $53,176. Only Jones and Guiliano will make more under the reorganization, Lovett said.
This year, the savings will include the six months the city will not pay recently retired Superintendent of Public Works Ernest Conover, who left his $68,604 position at the end of June. The city did not replace him. The savings will be $7,014 in salaries and wages for the general budget, $8,197 in salaries and wages for the Water Department budget and $8,522 less in overtime costs. That’s $23,733.
In 2013, a full year without the $68,604 salary of Conover and the reductions in other costs should mean a savings of over $100,000, officials said.
