Troup hopes to create new position for Conte, who would oversee multiple departments in city

QUINCY — A change Mayor Mike Troup wants to make in Quincy’s engineering, utilities and Central Services departments means bringing back a title the city hasn’t used in nearly 25 years.

Aldermen tabled at last Monday’s meeting of the City Council an appointment by Troup of Steve Bange as engineering manager. They want to vote first on an ordinance to create the position of director of public works, which received a first reading. 

Troup said his plan is for Jeff Conte, director of engineering and utilities, to become the director of public works. Bange would pick up some of Conte’s duties to supervise the engineering department. The city hired in April a trainee who is working to become an engineer.

Quincy’s last director of public works was Leon Kowalski, who had the position for 20 years before retiring in 1998. The City Council, with Chuck Scholz as mayor, approved the creation of Central Services in March 1998. The move was made to streamline city departments, bringing more than 100 employees under one umbrella to make it easier to assign workers.

Troup’s proposal calls for the director of public works to oversee Central Services, as well as utilities (water and sewer) and engineering. 

“Jeffrey is a good manager,” Troup said. “We can coordinate more projects better (with the creation of the public works director). That will allow our engineers work on the design of bigger projects that we have to do throughout the year. What (Bange) did last year probably saved the city approximately a million dollars. (A second engineer) will long term save the city even more with the more design work that can be done in house.”

Bergman wants to create public works position before addressing Bange promotion

Jeff Bergman, R-2, moved to table Bange’s appointment until aldermen formally approve the creation of the public works position.

“I don’t have a problem with the whole concept and what we’re trying to do,” Bergman said. “But it seems right now we’ve put the horse before the cart (sic).”

Mike Farha, R-4, also was uneasy about the creation of the position.

“My concern is, like 25 years later, we’re losing Central Services,” he said. “I can boil this down for the public to something simple. We have fewer workers (in Central Services) today than we did back in (1998). We’ve spent a fortune on Knapheide on stainless steel truck beds. We abuse the hell out of those things. People aren’t trained. We had a central garage one time where we took care of things. We’re not taking care of things. If you look at those truck beds, it’s not complicated why they’re all rusted through. We’re not cleaning them out. 

“I don’t necessarily have a problem with this, but I wish we were hiring more people to do more work and not more people to manage more. We seem confused enough with management, and we seem to be meeting more than enough. Meetings, goals, objectives … all of that has to generate into work.”

Changes to recycling could affect workforce issues

Troup said changes to the recycling program currently offered by the city could affect workforce issues at Central Services.

“I’ve told Kevin (McClean, director of Central Services) upfront to make sure the staff knows that even if we got rid of recycling or changed it to a drop-off program, those three or four people assigned to recycling today are going to be reassigned (within) Central Services,” he said. “Trust me when I say we have more than enough work to do out there.

“We couldn’t do all the things we wanted to last year. Last year, I was able to get council approval to bring on some extra people to help with concrete and the potholes, and we really got a lot accomplished. We’ve got a fair number of tree trimmings caught up that have been on the list. We’ve been consistently working to do all the curbs and sidewalks that we can.”

Troup also believes creating a new position for Conte will help the city with safety training.

“He can assign the safety training and monitoring to a specific person,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure we have the proper training of the staff to make sure they know how to operate all the equipment in a safe manner.

“Jeffrey is a very strong manager. Even when we negotiated the union contracts for Central Services, I’ve never seen someone more organized to go into the union discussions as Jeffrey was. That’s how he approaches everything he’s tasked with.”