Modesto eyes $470,000 Utilities Department restructuring

The Modesto City Council will be asked Tuesday to approve a restructuring of the Utilities Department that includes creating new job titles and duties, which will cost the city about $470,000 in higher pay in its current budget year.

The council also is expected to meet in closed session for the third time in recent weeks to discuss City Clerk Stephanie Lopez. The council has been discussing Lopez and her department after the wording for documentation related to a ballot measure was changed, which caused the measure not to be sent to all qualified voters in last week’s election. City Manager Jim Holgersson has said the documentation was changed in the city clerk’s office, perhaps in consultation with the Stanislaus County election office.

The Utilities Department is responsible for the city’s water and wastewater systems and was created in its current form as part of a citywide reorganization of more than a year ago. Utilities Director Larry Parlin said the proposal going before the council would create the types of positions and job qualifications the department needs for the long term and will result in better-qualified employees.

He said the proposal affects about 170 of the department’s 276 employees. It creates about 20 new jobs and eliminates more than two dozen. A city report states the job changes will result in annual pay increases of $440,658 for Utilities Department employees plus $265,172 for three new information-technology positions needed to support the Utilities Department, for a total annual cost of $705,830.

But the city report states the net cost to the Utilities Department in the current budget year is $470,683 because of savings from not filling three open positions. Parlin said he may eliminate those positions.

Though the council is expected to approve the restructuring Tuesday, the pay changes are effective December 2014, based on deals reached with the Modesto City Employees’ Association and the Modesto Confidential and Management Association. The money for the pay increases will come from the city’s water and sewer funds.

The meeting agenda states the council will meet in closed session to discuss “public employee discipline/hearing of complaints” related to the city clerk. Lopez and county Registrar of Voters Lee Lundrigan have declined to comment, and city officials have said after previous closed sessions that the council took no reportable action.

Modesto City Schools asked Modesto to put Measure F on the ballot. The measure asked voters whether the city should change its charter so Modesto City Schools board members could be elected by district. Measure F was supposed to go to all of the school district’s voters, including those outside the city, but it only went to voters in the city. A judge ordered that the vote from last week’s election not be counted and the election be held in June.

The council also will meet in closed session regarding seven legal cases. They include Stanislaus County’s 2011 lawsuit against the city regarding cleanup costs at the defunct Geer Road landfill and the North Modesto Groundwater Alliance’s 2013 lawsuit over the city’s plan to drill a huge well near alliance members’ homes.

The council also will take up the lawsuit filed this year by George Souliotes against the Modesto police and fire departments after a federal judge in 2013 overturned his conviction on murder and arson charges from a 1997 fire that killed three of his Modesto tenants. Souliotes filed his lawsuit in federal court in Fresno without an attorney but has since retained counsel.

The council meets at 5:30 p.m. in the basement chambers of Tenth Street Place, 1010 10th St.

This story was originally published November 9, 2015 at 4:18 PM with the headline "Modesto eyes $470,000 Utilities Department restructuring."