After a sometimes heated debate, the Verona Town Council voted three to two last night to extend the contract of town engineer Jim Helb. Council members Frank Sapienza, Bob Manley and Jay Sniatkowski voted for the three- year extension, while Michael Nochimson and Kevin Ryan were opposed. Ryan had attempted to challenge the contract, which could pay Helb $130,000 a year as an independent consultant, on grounds that the Council needed to explore cost-saving alternatives.
Helb, a long-time municipal employee, retired two years ago and was hired back as an independent consultant. Town Manager portrayed the move as a cost savings, since Verona would no longer be paying Helb benefits, and a way to preserve the expertise Helb had developed in Verona engineering issues. But Verona apparently erred when it let that consulting contract for two years instead of the state-mandated three. Last night, the Council was asked to consider Resolution No.99, which established a new contract to run from Oct. 1, 2012 through Sept. 30, 2015 and confer an exception from New Jersey’s Local Public Contracts Law that the job be publicly bid.
“There is a difference between what is permitted and what is sound practice,” said Ryan when the matter came up for discussion. “I believe firmly in putting a contract out to bid.”
Ryan sought to win agreement on extending the previous contract for one year to satisfy the state mandate, and soliciting bids during that time to see if it were possible for Verona to save money on its engineering costs. In addition to Helb, Verona has a $70,000 part-time employee in the engineering office, Noreen Jones, putting Verona’s total annual engineering costs at roughly $200,000. (Jones does not get benefits.) Ryan noted that Cedar Grove spends $108,000 on one municipal engineer.
Ryan and Nochimson also tried to draw out Martin on succession planning for the engineering department. Martin said that its part-time employee lacks all of the necessary licenses, but did not elaborate on what was being done, if anything, to get those licenses. Martin said that Verona was saving “at least” $50,000 on Helb’s salary from when he was a full-time employee, and praised Helb’s accomplishments. “He runs an engineering operation that is a model for municipalities,” Martin said. That praise was seconded by the Council members who voted for the contract extension, with Sapienza and Manley pointing to the many grants that Helb had won for projects in town. Last year, Helb was able to scoop up grant money that had gone unspent in other Essex County towns to fund the much needed reconstruction of Church Street.
Ryan was not swayed. “Loyalty is a commendable trait,” he said, “but it shouldn’t be the only part of the business process.”
“It’s still to me an over-budgeted service,” Ryan said of the engineering department. “We are in a critical economic time. We have to look to economize.”
