Collegian | Josh Hypes
The Hillsdale City Council approved a resolution to merge the positions of city manager and BPU director during its Oct. 18 meeting. The new position comes with a $158,600 salary, providing an approximately $40,000 raise for the city manager’s salary. This will save money in the city’s general fund by splitting expenses with the BPU fund.
Stockford said the merger would not give City Manager David Mackie any more power than he already has, but that he will simply be doing more work.
“The BPU director already reports to Dave,” Stockford said. “Think of this situation, if we had a lieutenant on the police force and we did not want to fill that position, and we said the chief is going to do that job from now on. That does not make the chief more powerful because he’s doing the job of someone that’s reporting to him.”
Stockford said the situation would change if the city gave the city manager a position higher than his own, such as the position of council member.
The merger would permanently change the city manager position.
“Yes, we would have to reapproach this with whoever we offered the job,” Councilman Bruce Sharp said.
Mackie said this move was part of a greater effort to save money in the city budget.
The council approved the merger of the positions 9-0.
The council also approved price tags for taxes in the areas of Hillcrest, Riverdale, and Williams Court.
As part of a city-wide effort to improve roads, residents from these areas agreed to pay for half the work done on neighborhood streets in exchange for priority roadwork. The final tax will cost residents in the Hillcrest area $3,195 per property, while it will cost Riverdale and Williams Court residents $5,000 and $3,940 per property, respectively.
City Engineer Kristen Bauer said costs increased for the Riverdale area because roadwork in the area went slightly over budget.
Most projects remained below budget, Bauer said.
Before approving the final assessment, Mayor Adam Stockford said he thought the “roads looked great!”
The council voted to approve the assessments by 9-0.