DAVID BILLIPS
WESTFIELD – Mayor Daniel M. Knapik is requesting the City Council to approve changes of city ordinances to consolidate several city departments and restructure management of a new Department of Public Works
Dave Billips, currently the superintendent of the Water Resource Department and interim superintendent of the Public Works Department, said Wednesday that the consolidation is based on an assessment of the current departmental structure completed in December by Tata & Howard of Marlborough.
Knapik hired the consulting firm last August to access the city’s departments currently performing a number of public works related functions to determine if consolidation of those departments would benefit the city.
Knapik is seeking City Council approval of an ordinance change to create a Department of Public Works which will “encompass the current Department of Public Works; The Water Resource Department; a portion of the Health Department, as it relates to the (Twiss Street) Transfer Station and the Parks & Recreation Department.”
Billips said that the reorganization will also involve moving divisions within the current departmental structure to a more streamlined organizational structure.
“What (Tata & Howard) are recommending is consolidation of those departments,” Billips said. “There will still be four divisions, Public Works, Water, Wastewater and Parks & Recreation. Within those divisions there will be subdivisions.”
The management structure will also be modified with a director and assistant director, as well as four division deputy superintendents overseeing the new consolidated department which will have more than 100 employees.
Billips said that there are currently 108 employees in the present departments and there are several positions that are vacant because those positions have not been funded.
Billips said that under the consolidation plan the Public Works Division will have several subdivisions, including highway, solid waste and recycling collection and the transfer station management.
Public Works will lose both the sewer subdivision and the stormwater subdivision, which will be consolidated with the Wastewater Division.
“It will be a combined wastewater collection division with sewer, stormwater, sewer pumping stations all put into the wastewater division,” Billips said. “That will mean that employees now being paid out of the stormwater fee will be paid out of the wastewater account so that stormwater money can be used for stormwater projects. That has been a concern of the City Council and the (state) Department of Revenue.”
The Parks & Recreation Department will also be restructured and bolstered by the transfer of the Natural Resource division which is currently in Public Works.
“The Natural Resource Division will be under Parks & recreation for park and playground maintenance, tree maintenance, but the recreation will be maintained as a separate subdivision within the Park & Recreation division,” Billips said.
The Water Department stays pretty much as it is now,” Billips said. “The director of the consolidated department will continue to report to the present boards and commissions.”
The consolidated department will be under the control of the Board of Public Works, the Water Commission and the Parks & Recreation Commission.
“We should have made this change years ago,” Billips said. “Most other communities have an organizational structure similar to this.”
