By JONATHAN SNYDER
The city of Bluffton is still looking to replace two roles — their search for a city engineer is reaching six months, while another offer has been reportedly tendered for an economic development director.
Cheryl Morphew has handled both county and city consulting for economic development matters in the interim. Morphew is on a fee for service agreement, available for up to 10 hours a month for $150 per hour. Mayor John Whicker said approximately eight people have applied for the vacancy; the city has not heard an official response from the individual they tendered an offer to.
County Commissioner Jeff Stringer had reported prospects with another candidate in May, but that individual reportedly backed out.
If a hire is made, the county and city still need to work out an interlocal agreement, where both parties will share the salary for said position. However, Whicker stated position will be classified as a city employee.
Stringer, County Council member Seth Whicker, Common Council member Scott Mentzer and Mayor John Whicker have been involved in the hiring process.
Wells County has not had a full-time economic development director since April.
“She (Morphew) is still engaged. We’re not missing opportunities because this person isn’t on board, and we will continue to have somebody filling those responsibilities, whether it’s the economic development director or the engineering responsibilities,” Mentzer said. “There will be somebody to take care of those duties until we have those positions filled. So from our perspective, while we would like to get them filled as soon as possible, we can be patient to find the right person.”
Meanwhile, the search for a city engineer has continued since former City Engineer Kelly White resigned in February. In the interim, the city has been using a company out of Fort Wayne for engineering purposes, Mentzer said.
“There’s lots of smaller towns and cities that tend to use engineering companies as their engineer,” Mentzer said. “So they pay an engineering company to come in and do the work. That’s how we operated until we brought Kelly on board.”
Part of the issue with finding an engineer, according to both Mentzer and Mayor John Whicker, is the competition with the private sector. Both stated that the city will exercise caution in hiking up their proposed salary for a new engineer, as they are not missing any major projects at the moment and want to avoid the risk of shuffling salary numbers.
“It’s taxpayer dollars that pay for these positions,” Mentzer said. “We want to be financially responsible with the dollars, and we’re still hopeful that we can find a candidate that is inside our current salary ordinance range. There’s no projects that are falling through the cracks because of a lack of an engineer. We’re just having to contract those services out, rather than having that engineer on staff.”
“We have to be careful with compensation,” Whicker said. “We want to be competitive in the hiring process, but we can’t go crazy at the expense of our other department heads and other city employees.”
The city has also had difficulty finding candidates with municipal utility credentials. The multitude of county engineers in the public sector may not have the skill set that the city is looking for with utilities, in particular with the city’s electric department. Whicker stated that most communities do not have an electric utility, instead choosing to have a provider like AEP or Indiana Michigan Power.
“Generally speaking, we’re at a size for a city that is right on that line of, ‘Would a city our size typically have a city engineer or not have a city engineer?’” Mentzer said. “I feel like we’re right on that tipping point. And bigger cities have bigger budgets, and they can afford to pay some of these positions more than we can afford. We think this position is important, but we want to be fiscally responsible with the taxpayer dollar”
jonathan@news-banner.com
