Cape works to revamp engineering department

Cape Girardeau city officials expect to hire a new city engineer within the next 10 days who will broaden public-relations efforts so affected property owners and the public know more about plans for street, sewer and water improvements.

Mayor Jay Knudtson said the council has made it clear to city manager Doug Leslie -- who was hired by the council -- that it wants department heads who are customer-service oriented. The city manager hires department heads.

Knudtson said the city engineering department needs a balance between engineering expertise and the ability to communicate with the public.

"There is nothing that this council gets more frustrated with than situations where it is clear that there was a lack of accurate and responsive communication," Knudtson said.

Leslie said the search for a new city engineer to replace Mark Lester -- who resigned on Feb. 18 -- has been narrowed to two finalists. Leslie said he hopes to select one of them within the next 10 days.

The new head of the engineering department will have an opportunity to reshape the office, he said.

Once the new city engineer is on board, the city expects to hire at least two additional engineers to get the staffing up to its former level.

Leslie said the city needs at least four engineers to handle the workload. When Lester left, he took two of his engineers with him.

"We were operating at a minimum level to start with," Leslie said. "We don't plan to downsize."

City officials and Lester said many public works projects were farmed out to private engineering companies because the city engineering staff couldn't handle the heavy workload.

The increase in duties weren't matched by more staffing, said Lester, who served in the engineering department for more than 14 years. He headed the department for nearly nine years dating back to May 1996.

Lester said his department worked on everything from street projects to sewer and water extension projects. The department staff also reviewed numerous subdivision plans.

Lester said the workload has increased dramatically since voters approved a sales tax to fund street projects in 1995 and renewed the tax five years later.

Even when a private firm was hired to do design work, Lester said, his office still had to review the design work.

The engineering department totaled more than a dozen employees under Lester's management at the time of his departure, including engineers, construction inspectors and surveyors. As city engineer, Lester operated a department with a budget of more than $530,000.

Lester and two other engineers in the department, assistant city engineer Melanie Gertis and engineer Jaclyn Dameron, left to start their own engineering firm.

The departure of Lester, Gertis and Dameron left only one civil engineer in the city engineering department, Abdul Alkadry. He's been helped out by the public works director, Tim Gramling, a licensed engineer who was appointed to temporarily run the department.

As the only state licensed engineer for the city now, Gramling has had to sign off on all engineering plans to be in compliance with state law.

Gramling said he and his staff have so far kept up by working long hours. "We really haven't experienced a backlog of anything yet," he said.

Survey staff have worked on some of the basic engineering plans, Gramling said.

Lester is the fifth administrative staff member in Cape Girardeau city government to leave since voters elected Knudtson and three new council members in April 2002 -- Marcia Ritter, Evelyn Boardman and Charlie Herbst.

The others are former city manager Michael Miller, who was fired by the council, former fire chief Michael Lackman, former Convention and Visitors Bureau director Terri Clark-Bauer and former city inspections director Tarryl Booker.

Lester said his department routinely held open houses and public meetings with affected property owners. But most of those meetings weren't announced to the public, he said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123