St. Clairsville City Council talks new service director

T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA
Potential new hire Michael Reed answers questions from St. Clairsville City Council about whether he would be a good fit as the new service director.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — St. Clairsville City Council discussed the possibility of filling the director of Safety and Public Services position on Monday.

Mayor Kathryn Thalman addressed council and recommended appointing Micheal Reed to the position.

“I would like to respectfully put forward for our service director Mr. Micheal Reed. I think we’ve all got a chance to see Mike’s resume. He’s been with us for a little over a year now, and he has got wonderful time management skills. He’s organized and he’s almost been acting as the de facto service director right now,” Thalman said.

Reed has been with the city for about a year and previously worked for the Belmont County Water and Sewer District for 12 years.

He is a licensed wastewater superintendent.

Thalman believes that Reed would be a great fit for the service director position but noted that she thinks there may have been some concerns regarding the salary.

She suggested going into executive session to iron out any potential issues or discrepancies.

Council member Mike Smith replied that he believes the issue isn’t necessarily regarding salary but his concern that Reed will have enough time to do two jobs since he would also fill the role of wastewater superintendent.

“The safety director and and service director used to be two separate jobs, but we combined them. Now we’re going to combine three, and I have some concerns that he will be able to devote enough time to both,” Smith said.

Reed responded that he could meet the demands of the position.

“More than likely there’s going to be some 10-hour days, but it’s a salaried position so it’s kind of what I signed up for so I understand that. If I have to put extra time down on the sewer side it’s not a problem at all,” Reed said.

Council member Lucien Murzyn asked Reed if there was anybody he would be able to delegate authority to, and Reed replied, “Yea there’s people to delegate authority to. There’s also an open assistant position down there that’s within the union contract that can be filled in house.”

Council member Don Vincenzo asked Reed how many hours a week he is required by the Environmental Protection Agency to put in at the wastewater plant because of his license. Reed answered that he puts in 20 hours a week at the wastewater plant but that he is not the only class 2 operator at the plant. He said that it does have a second class 2 operator who would be able to split the 20 hours with him. Vincenzo asked Reed why they would have to burden Reed with being the wastewater superintendent.

“He’s not ready to be a superintendent, if that makes sense,” Reed said. “He’s a very good kid, he’s very good at what he does. He’s getting better at running the plant. He was very green when I started here. I’ve shown him a lot of how the plant operates and everything, but he’s not ready for the superintendent role yet.”

Murzyn asked how long Reed thinks it would take for the other worker to be ready to be the superintendent. Reed replied that he believes it would still be a few years until the second class 2 operator would be ready to be the superintendent.

“My concern for you as service director is I know our past service director always said through texts, emails and meetings that he broke his own record for 130 hours in two weeks. When he left it was stated that he was like 2,000 of comp time that he missed out on, which concerns me because we definitely need a full-time service director,” Vincenzo said.

Reed replied that he believes some of those numbers were inflated.

“There were certain things where the former service director was doing out on job sites that we probably didn’t need him there for. That’s what we have supervisors for, to delegate the work. It would’ve saved a lot of unnecessary time,” Reed noted.

Vincenzo stressed that he believes the city needs a full-time service director,

“There’s no way I want to set you up right off the beginning for failure with all these hours,” Vincenzo said. “Like I said, we really need a full-time service director.”

Thalman agreed that previous service director Jeremy Greenwood could have delegated more tasks.

“I will say I love Jeremey, love him to death. But I think he could have let go of a little bit of the responsibilities to the supervisors,” Thalman said. “And again I love him to death but he wanted his hands on everything and I think that’s the architect in him, but we had a very long conversation about that and I think there’s something to be said about delegating to the superintendents.”

After much deliberation, council decided it would be best to table the discussion to iron out the details on potentially hiring Reed. The general consensus was that council members were very impressed with Reed but were worried about the workload being too time consuming for someone to hold a second position.

Council President Jim Velas suggested Thalman and Reed set up a meeting and that she relay the details back to the council at a later date. He added that if it were needed, council could set a special meeting to finalize the details.