5.3 ERMUSR 03-09-2004 '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.