WESTFIELD – The city is seeking to hire a consulting firm to review the operations, standard procedures and staffing with bids due July 9 by a 2 p.m. deadline.
Mayor Daniel M. Knapik said that retirement of Collector Michael McMahon triggered the search for a consultant to assess the department.
“Any other time, at least during my term in office, when we’ve had the retirement of a department head, we’ve brought in a consultant to do an assessment of that department,” Knapik said. “Retirements give the city the rare and unique opportunity to look at a number of things.”
“So this is the perfect time to bring in an organization to review our practices and to see if we can make any improvements,” Knapik said. “We are considering recombining the Treasurer and Collections departments, going back to what we had, so a review of the staffing is critical.”
“We also have robust technology throughout the city governmental structure so we want to know if we can use that available technology to increase efficiencies in those departments,” Knapik said.
Knapik said that another part of the study is to examine the practice of sending the city’s tax receipts to a private firm, rather than having the Collector’s Office process tax bill payments which was formerly done in-house to avoid the fees charged for that administrative function by the private company.
Knapik said that he did a similar assessment following the resignation of James Mulvenna, the long-time Public Works superintendent. The consulting firm of Tara & Howard of Marlborough was retained last August to assess the city’s departments currently performing a number of public infrastructure maintenance functions to determine if consolidation of those departments would benefit the city.
“What (Tata & Howard) recommended is consolidation of those departments,” DPW Superintendent Dave Billips said last summer. “There will still be four divisions, Public Works, Water, Wastewater and Parks & Recreation. Within those divisions there will be subdivisions.”
Tara & Howard also recommended that the city’s infrastructure management structure be modified with a director and assistant director, as well as four division deputy superintendents overseeing the newly consolidated department which will have more than 100 employees.
The City Council approved the consolidating of those departments into one administration when it approved an ordinance amendment in February.
The Board of Public Works and the Water Commission took the last step under the Tara & Howard recommendation earlier this week when it named Billips to the new superintendent’s post. The new consolidated Department of Public Works will officially come into existence when the 2016 Fiscal Year begins, given that the City Council approves a budget by July 1, 2015.
