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Cheap way out isn’t working

    Penny-wise but pound-foolish: How better to describe the city of Schenectady’s inability to attract qualified applicants for two vacancies in its Engineering Department, one of which is now more than a year old?
    As a story in Thursday’s Gazette spelled out, the starting salary for junior civil engineers with the city is about one-third less than what private engineering firms pay. Granted, the city job might offer slightly shorter hours and better benefits, but when the pay differential is so great ($35,000 vs. $50,000 or $55,000) is it any wonder that a qualified engineer just left for a private firm, and the city hasn’t had much luck finding a replacement?
    As if money weren’t a big enough disincentive, there’s the city’s residency requirement: Why take a job that dictates where you have to live, especially if you’re someone who’s just gotten out of college and are just starting out professionally? Perhaps if the job paid well, applicants might be willing to overlook the residency requirement.
    Meanwhile, if the city can’t replace the recently departed engineers, it will have to contract out for professional engineering services — at a cost of roughly $150 per hour!
    Simply letting these jobs slide hardly seems acceptable: The engineer who retired last winter was primarily responsible for identifying pavement problems (no wonder the city’s roads seem to have taken a turn for the worse), while the one who just left oversaw the design of sewer and water projects.
    The council, which has seen fit to upgrade the salaries of various other professionals around city hall, needs to be more realistic about the engineering department as well — unless it wants to hire a la carte for seven times the amount of money. And it should drop its arcane residency requirement for all city employees. Schenectady needs to attract the best people it can for these jobs, not simply the most loyal.

Rotterdam did the same thing, changed the title of the job in order to lower the engineer aides salary and they lost her to the state where she's doing the same job. Rotterdam now has to hire out all the engineering work at a higher expense to residents or accept the word of the developers engineer which is bias to say the least.

That is what will happen to our medical care.....nurses/doctors/cna's will be contracted out......IT IS NOT CHEAPER....and the government obviously can not do it cheaper either.....

An engineer is probably one of the most needed positions in Rotterdam. We clearly can't lean in the expertise of the developers any longer. We need an un-bias expert in the field of smart development. And Rotterdam hasn't seen the likes of that in decades.

The answer that I heard from the planning board at a meeting I attended was that the board has to believe the developers engineers as they have the expertise. You're right Bumble this type of thinking has got to change as there has been too many times that the developers engineers have been wrong and the residents have paid an enormous price for it. Just ask the residents of Masullo, Bluebird Lane, Highbridge Rd, and Rotterdam Junction what they think of the towns past practice of believing the developers. Just look what we've paid for consulting engineering studies this year alone and we could have had a full time engineer working for town and for the good of the residents.

We need someone who will protect us and someone who will look out for OUR best interest. OUR BEST INTEREST!

I believe the engineer topic will be part of the Dems platform next election cycle.  The Mike Griesemer/Director of Public Works experiment has become way to political.  I couldn't agree more with you bumble on this one!

PDQ---I think we need one but, no matter which party is 'in charge'----SHOW ME THE MONEY TRAIL.......that will not be something that needs to be a 'platform'.....there is more power with a people march on town hall---right up to both parties leaders and pie in their faces........ >

and what about the army corps of engineers and the 'ballpark'???? now,,,a. they were not correct in their first assumption, b. the political winds weren't blowing in the right direction or c. those 'leaders' in charge of the money saw the big economic bomb coming and were not going to be 'responsible' to edumacate the public(they already made their money)?????

any choice would show the shortsightedness of all parties involved......

I'm willing to bet that the land earmarked for the little league will be absorbed by the Helderberg Meadows project if and when it's built, maybe it will be turned into a park?

You may be correct on this one shadow, but I thought they were looking on the west end of town for a park.