A personnel shakeup continues at the City of Dearborn.
The city is advertising for a sewer/water operator, and that eventual hire will serve as the city’s only full time public worker, a move dictated by the city’s budget crunch.
That’s the word this week from Mayor Josh Linville, who indicated the board of aldermen has made the decision to have just one outside city employee on full time and “maybe in the summer hire someone part-time or on an as-needed basis.”
A shakeup in the city’s public works staff began in January, when the board agreed to cut the hours of its three public works employees. K.C. Davidson saw his guaranteed hours cut from 50 to 40 per week, and Billy Clay Davidson’s hours were slashed from 40 to 32.
K.C. Davidson later resigned and his full time position was offered to Billy Clay Davidson. Linville said Billy Clay Davidson has not accepted the position and indicated he is no longer on the job.
“He’ll be getting vacation and sick pay time that he has built up,” the mayor explained.
With both Davidsons now gone, the mayor, some aldermen—including Bill Edwards—and even everyday citizens have stepped in to help the city perform tasks such as blade last week’s snow from the streets.
“It’s one of those cases where citizens pay taxes to have things like that done. We’re having a little bit of a hiccup right now and if that means that I or some of our board members need to help out, we’ll do that,” Linville said.
Frank Dovel, who works only on an as-needed basis, has been filling the water tower every week.
“Our budget cannot justify the way we were doing business so changes had to be made. You can’t keep on losing money every year,” Linville said.
Job duties for the new hire will include repairing water main breaks, maintaining all water meters, collecting monthly water and sewer samples and sending them to the state, maintaining sewer plant, and helping in all areas of city maintenance.
Resumes will be accepted until Feb. 25 at 5 p.m. at city hall.