Ortonville- The village will officially have a Department of Public Works again after the council unanimously voted at their Sept. 14 meeting to hire a full-time DPW director.
Aileen Champion made the motion after saying research into hiring a private contractor to provide DPW services showed there were no cost savings and that residents like having one person consistently doing the work.
The motion the village council approved will give the as yet unhired DPW director the authority to discipline any DPW employee and make expenditures regarding the DPW according to guidelines set forth by the village council, as well as include the director in the hiring of any DPW employee.
‘We have better control over the DPW and more flexibility when we hire our own employees, and it’s cheaper,? explained Village Council President Ken Quisenberry. ‘It’s much easier to provide services in-house as the needs fluctuate.? The village has not had a formal DPW since late January, early February, when DPW employees Bill Prince and Kevin Booms were fired. After the terminations, the village paid private contractors for various services, including snowplowing and drain work on Mill Street. At the council’s direction, Village Manager Ed Coy hired a part-time DPW employee to perform necessary work, including mowing village properties and emptying garbage. Quisenberry expects to keep the part-time employee on, in addition to the soon-to-be hired full-time DPW director, and said the full-time employee would get a minimum of 40 hours per week at $20 per hour, with the part-time employee getting an additional 20-40 hours per week, depending on need, but averaging 20 hours at an undetermined rate of pay.
Keeping one full-time employee and supplementing the position with part-time workers will avoid the possibility of a union forming. When the village reached settlement agreements in June with Teamsters Local 214 representing Booms and Prince, one of the terms stated, ‘The union understands and agrees that effective July 1, it will no longer represent a DPW unit at the village.?
Quisenberry said he hopes to have hired the full-time employee and have the DPW ‘up and running? in the next two or three weeks.
‘Whoever gets the position will have to spend immediate time getting familiar with the equipment and daily routine and then we will get into bigger projects like road repair, heavy duty landscaping, and infrastructure such as improved drainage,? said Quisenberry.