By Dan Spalding
News Now Warsaw
WARSAW — The city of Warsaw is moving to restructure several departments with oversight by one person.
The consolidation of building & planning, street maintenance, engineering, and wastewater was initially approved on Monday, but still has a few steps to go before finalized.
The goal is to improve communications and coordination of departments that are already closely connected, said Mayor Jeff Grose.
Much of the plan was outlined by Denny Harlan, director of Human Resources at Monday’s city council meeting.
“The concern we had for it and the reason we wanted to bring them all together is just so we have a centralized leadership,” Harlan said.
Grose credited a lot of work by Harlan’s office, the mayor’s office, the wage committee, and individual discussions with council members over the past six to eight months led to the ordinance.
He said Dustin Dillon, the existing superintendent of public works, would become director of the new collection of departments, which would be known as Public Works.
If finalized, somebody else would move into Dillon’s current role.
The department will be an executive department within city government and will have oversight over the newly aligned “divisions.”
The change would help promote short- and long-term planning, consistency with project management, and improved budgeting.
An ordinance establishing a Department of Public Works was approved unanimously Monday on first reading by the City Council.
City Council member Cindy Dobbins weighed in on the proposal.
“I just know over the past several years, actually, different council members and in conjunction with myself, we’ve had conversations where maybe there should be a — for the lack of a better term — city manager. This would kind of be the same situation. I think we all realize that the mayor can’t possibly coordinate all of that,” Dobbins said.
“No offense,” Dobbins added, looking at Grose. “It’s a huge, huge job to keep all these balls up in the air.”
The changes would require a new salary ordinance.
A second reading of the plan will be considered at the council’s Aug. 18 meeting.
