“It doesn’t take a majority to win, just a tireless minority that will keep starting brush fires in the mind and hearts of their fellow men.”

Samuel Adams

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Qualifications for the Superintendent of Public Works Civil Engineer



These are the qualifications on the job description. Even more interesting are the job responsibilities required. The city is expecting so much more than our current employee could ever have possibly done. You can request a copy of all of this information through Kim Reese our Human Resources Person and sure it would be considered a FOIA.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

I notice Chamlin did not include "Five years Supervisory experience" as one of the required qualifiers for the candidates.
While Peru is not a large city, we do have a considerable number of Public Works employees as well as far too many part-time patronage employees who have never had any leadership or direction from a strong supervisor for more than 44 years.
It is clear that Chamlin directed this hiring process to enable them to remain in charge of all of Peru's Public Works activities.
So long as the current set of elected officials are in office Peru will never stand a chance of operating its public utilities without the heavy hand of Chamlin & Associates picking our pockets.
Shame on our mayor and aldermen, especially the "public worst committee" for failing to hire a truly independent engineer with supervisory experience.

Anonymous said...

11:02 I have some prime real-estate to sell you in the South Pacific. Your attempt to paint conspiracy is getting out of control. Your now blaming Chamlin for hiring a professional engineer to manage the public works? You must be angry about not getting the job. Please get your Professional Engineering license, experience, knowledge, hands on competence before you attempt to knock the city for hiring a professional. Who are these patronage jobs?

Anonymous said...

11:02 , I agree with you completely. While I am certain the young man that was hired by Chamlin & Associates is an eager and motivated youngster, I would have preferred that our illustrious city council would have made an honest attempt to advertise more broadly and attract a larger number of potential candidates "with" actual supervisory experience. Hiring a consultant to find a quality candidate as LaSalle is doing would have been cost-effective considering the importance of the position. Peru elected officials have no knowledge or ability to hire for this position. The problem is we have people like Dave Waldorf who have absolutely no clue what they are doing and the entire city suffers as a result. Incompetent elected officials with inflated egos is not what we need.

Anonymous said...

11:02 and 2:29 your the same person. Should the city have used you as a consultant, please list your vast experience. Fantasy and facts are two very different animals, the Mayor hired a qualified candidate and why distort the fact? Your still fuming about the job? Credentials, Education, Experience is the only arguement. If you have any of those and your left out of the process, please let this be known. Hopefully you got a fair shake. They did mention that they wanted a Professional Engineer, did you qualify and were overlooked?

Anonymous said...

Anon 3:12 How do you know that the mayor hired a qualified candidate?
How long have you ar the mayor known this person? How many times have you and the mayor worked in a professional setting with this qualified candidate. After the last hiring for a SPW this candidate will have to prove himself qualified by his job performance, which I hope he does.
LaSalle is going about filling Sams'
position in a professional manner Peru should have done the same.

Anonymous said...

Is this similar to the hiring process of the new fire engineer position that was recently discussed on a blog in regards to test scores, etc... ?

Anonymous said...

Hired by Chamblin? They were for tge local guy that applied.

Anonymous said...

Why are we having so much trouble putting the videos of the council meetings on line? If Connecting Point can't figure out what's wrong with their equipment the city needs to look elsewhere. This is ridiculous. The last meeting posted in 6/17. It's not right to just pick and choose which meetings to post (and believe you me that's what people know is happening because surely we would not keep on playing games with Connecting Points all this time).

Anonymous said...

Why would a private outside firm (Chamlins) be in on the hiring process?

Anonymous said...

were not haveing trouble posting the video's ! the mayor and aldermen don't want them posted so they come up with excuses so they are not posted !!! come on think about it ? you can't be that stupid can you ? we live in HARL 'S WORLD ! do as i say , not as i should do !!!

Peru Town Forum said...

8:40 AM

In my opinion, there is not one individual at city hall that knows how to do it and I want to know who wrote up te job description. The talking heads down there could not have put it together without outside help and even with that, it is still very inconsistent,
We are asking the new hire to do many jobs that GB never did and I am not referring to engineering.

Peru Town Forum said...

Why does the mayor always hold a golf outing in the middle of July at the hottest time of the year when no one should be outside doing anything if possible? Is is perhaps they don't want to golf and they can stay inside and the name is a a ruse?

Anonymous said...

The job description is very complete and professional. Its a standard skill set that outlines the duties. You have a number of quality individuals at City Hall that are capable of developing the qualifications and interviewing candidates. I don't believe that the current SPW or Chamlin was involved in the process. Its sad that many who were criticl of the current SPW are now critical of the new SPW hiring. It makes you wonder how many naysayers feel that because of their political affiliations, low-level job experience, campaign cheerleader, or attending a council meeting once in a while, makes them a qualified Professional Engineer that deserves the appointement

Anonymous said...

According to a June press release the city of Peru received 25 recycling bins that were to be placed in all the parks and by city buildings. Apparently they are blue in color and for recycling garbage only. I have yet to see any however, this situation poses a question "Who will empty these recycling bins in our parks?" Remember, the city workers no longer perform that task. Will it be another added cost to the city to hire another job out?

Anonymous said...

What gets me is the out of towners who attend this golf outing who are related to city employees. Of course there is reasonings behind this. That $100 per person would be nice to have in the pool fund. How many of those attendees donated monies to pool fund?

Peru Town Forum said...

10:29 AM
somehow I doubt that you know the education, job experiences, life experiences and abilities of anyone that you see fit to criticize. Many could very well exceed yours and those you defend. No one and I repeat no one has criticized the newly hired engineer. It is the secretive way this administration including the highly touted committees do things and don't even know how to courteously inform the residents of this city. This is NOT a private corp., this is a municipal government and lets start running it as such. It is not their money it is ours that entitles them to collect a salary and not an expected bonus for good behavior.

Anonymous said...

@11:29. Lois, well said, and in agreement with you. You are 100% correct.

Anonymous said...

10:29 pointed out that the job description was complete. Typically a business or city will not involve everybody in the interview process. We as residents are entitled to the services that the position brings, if you have trouble with those services then you should contact the elected leader that supervises that service. You elected a Mayor that is the supervisor of the city services. Despite your reasoning as we the tax payers pay for the services, you can't expect to be involved in hiring, supervising city employees. It doesn't make sense.

Anonymous said...

Nobody is criticizing the new hire. Some are criticizing what was a half-hearted and rushed application process that was half-hearted at best. What the defenders of this flawed process cannot defend is the fact that the new hire has "zero" experience "leading" a department and that is a very important qualification that was deliberately omitted as a pre-qualifier for the job.
Why? Because that ensures the new employee will be an instant follower instead of an instant leader who might just have well established procedures and ideas on how a city utility should be run. Those ideas would very likely turn a rag-tag disorganized Public Works Dept. into an organized and efficient operation. That type of quality would cut deep into the billable hours of our current engineering consultants monthly invoices. As a previous blogger made clear, I'm sure our new Engin-Tendant is a wonderful young man with a good education and some civil engineering experience. However, he is about to take over a department that has a significant number of poorly trained and un-motivated workers who have never had real leadership from its SPW or elected officials. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. While there are several outstanding public works employees who could work for any big city department, the others are just dead weight.
This kid has been handicapped right off the bat by having his duties divided between two objectives. Superintendant/Engineer. I hope he can do both jobs effectively, but I am convinced that the people who manipulated this hiring process from the start never intended to hire someone capable of wearing both hats. It's not in their financial interest to do so.
If you think the people who really run this city are not capable of something like this then you are the ones responsible for electing those that alow it to happen.

Anonymous said...

the past 40 plus the years the city was run very well. there was no degree, just hard work and knowledge, i think is very unfair of first blogger to be so negative. give this guy a chance he may be just what the city needs as long as he has his own opinions and is not "run" by the administration-that will be the test can he stand up for himself or is he going to fold???

Peru Town Forum said...

5:30 PM

Thank you for your excellent post and glad you answered before I had time to do so. As I listened to the tape of the last meeting, I immediately noticed that neither Ald. Lukosus or Waldorf knew the name of the firm for which this new hire was coming from. The Mayor also said something about a small company. Prior to the meeting most people thought we were hiring a city engineer and not until the agenda came out did we see Superintendent of Public Works Civil Engineer. Of course I was told the job description was in the paper but I don't receive the N.T. as many don't and there were no discussions at council meetings either. Yorkville is his home location and the company Engineering Enterprises is located in Sugar Grove IL.
Since then the duties and qualifications have been disclosed. The job description is available from Human Resources and it is definitely worth a read. You will immediately see that there is no precedence in our Public Works Dept. for much of what will be expected of this new hire. I wish the best to him and hope he is ready to take on this challenge and fulfill all that is expected of him.

Anonymous said...

This PE doesn't stand a chance having his own thoughts and opinions with chamlin being involved.

Anonymous said...

7:10 - You been drinking again? City run well the last 40 years? The public works dept consisted of half of the same family and it took 25 or more of them to do the same job that 10 or less can do today. That dept was the most inefficient fiasco in government I have ever seen!!!

Anonymous said...

Anon 9:25 The degree of hallucinating that 7:10 is suffering from is not caused by drinking. The cause is normally very strong drugs.
Do you realize that you are stating that the individual public works employee is doing 2 1/2 times the work that was done previously in this department. Are you sure that technology does not account for a huge amount of this difference.
Also how do workmen compensation cases compare today to years ago?
Anyhow I like the 2013 figure and thank the public works employees for a impressive job well done.

Anonymous said...

Did the infrastructure committee interview the candidates?

Anonymous said...

Is the infrastructure committee still in existence? What was the true reasoning that the infrastructure committee was created?
Most developing localities have tremendous success with volunteer committees and obtain free advise from experienced and professional people who are interested in their community. Also a great way to keep everyone on their toes.

Anonymous said...

TRANSPARENCY=TRUTH

Anonymous said...

TRANSPARENCY=TRUTH