5.3 ERMUSR 03-09-2004 - Laserfiche WebLink

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'ilk River Municipal Utilities 322 King Avenue phone: 763.441.2020 Elk River,MN 55330 Fax:763.441.8099 March 1, 2004 To: Elk River Municipal Utilities Commission John Dietz Jerry Takle James Tralle From: Bryan Adams Subject: Hire Lineperson The 2004 budget contains an allowance to add an electric lineperson position. The proposed position would be an apprentice lineperson and would act as a "floater" or a person who would fill in if one of the other linepersons are sick or on vacation. With five 2 person crews, someone is generally sick or on vacation. If this is not the case, he would be assigned to one of the crews that need extra help. This floater position was used a couple of years ago, but was absorbed when we recently added the 5th electric crew. Staff now recommends we re-establish this position. Glenn, Dave and I have been reviewing the organization structure of our operation area. We are at the limit of adding craft people without adding more support or supervisory people. Our limiting factor is getting the required planning, materials, permits, drawing, inspection, billing, etc. done in a timely an accurate fashion to support our craft/people. Glenn, Dave and I are also getting bogged down in other less important but still required reporting and regulating activities. Typical examples include administering wellhead protection programs, safety manuals, compliance reports, vulnerability assessments, spill prevention and countermeasure plans, and electric utility operations manual to satisfy insurance requirements. We also need to implement a GIS system. Our personnel projections in our annual budget include a computer aid draft person (CAD) position in 2005. There is no question this position is needed and it will probably be an engineering tech person. The next few months will be spent identifying job duties and job qualifications, so we are in a position to make a well thought out recommendation this fall.