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SCHENECTADY
Engineer calls it quits as projects get moving
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

    City Engineer Bernie Sisson walked off the job last week, announcing his immediate retirement just as the city begins five multimillion-dollar construction projects.
    No one would say why Sisson left so suddenly, but Mayor Brian U. Stratton criticized his timing, which will likely require the city to pay much more than Sisson’s salary to hire consultants for this year’s work.
    “It’s not a good time,” Stratton said. “I don’t think there’s ever a good time, but certainly if we didn’t have so much going on, it wouldn’t be as much of an obstacle.”
    Attempts to reach Sisson were unsuccessful.
    Commissioner of General Services Carl Olsen has been warning the city for years that Sisson might retire. In late 2007, he asked the City Council to give Sisson a $9,000 raise to convince him to stay. The city gave him a $5,000 raise in the 2008 budget, but Olsen said that wouldn’t be enough.
    In the 2009 budget, the council gave Sisson another raise, this time $6,000. That upped his salary to $93,600.
    Now the city is actively looking for a new engineer, Stratton said. The job has not yet been listed on the city’s Web site, and Olsen warned that finding a replacement for Sisson might be a difficult task.
    In his 2007 appeal for Sisson’s raise, he said no one would take the city job at its then-salary of $81,000.
    “Before Bernie came, we had a very hard time getting someone to take that job,” he said. “He does water, sewer, construction and design. If you compare that to other municipalities of this size, they usually have one [professional engineer] for each of those.”
    But after Sisson retired, Olsen said the engineer had good timing in one respect — he left during a recession in which the area has record-high unemployment.
    “Good people are hard to find, but they’re there. It’s good benefits, good job, there’s a recession — we’ll find somebody,” Olsen said.
    Until then, the city may have to hire outside help. That could prove costly. Professional engineers are paid roughly $150 an hour for contract work. Through salary, Sisson was paid about $51 an hour.
    Sisson also saved the city millions through his innovative designs, which often allowed the city to make critical repairs to its sewer and water systems without going over budget.
    A year ago, Sisson found a way to clean the Front Street sewer for just $400,000, when the lowest bidder had offered to do the job for $1.7 million. He researched the complicated cleaning task and found that the city could rent new technology to do the job.
    “Bernie found the technology down in Texas and saved us a ton of money,” Olsen said. “He did wonderful things for the city.”
    Stratton agreed, saying that Sisson was “committed and passionate.”
    He added that Sisson’s departure won’t hurt the many projects planned for this year, including the start of the $20.3 million Bureau of Services project on Foster Avenue, the final design of the $14 million Erie Boulevard streetscape, the rebuilding of the train station, the addition of a second rail line and the bus rapid transit project on State Street.
    “I’m confident we will have all the engineering support that we need to move forward with all the projects,” Stratton said. “It’s a critical position and we have many projects under way. It’s an active time.”
    Longtime City Clerk Carolyn Friello is also retiring this year, although her retirement has been planned for some time. Friello, 65, had intended to retire last year but decided it would be too painful to leave the city’s political hub.
    “I’d have to sit at home, read the stories and know that I had been part of that,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. This job has been my life.”
    Friello has been city clerk since 1989.
    This spring, with her...............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00701