News | Peachtree City

PTC still looking for stormwater engineer

Thu, 08/24/2006 - 3:25pm
By: John Munford

Despite advertisements that have been published for months, Peachtree City has been unable so far to find a qualified person to hire as its stormwater engineer.

City staff may soon propose a change to the qualifications, which include that the person be a certified professional engineer with stormwater experience. The certification would allow the engineer to work on other city projects as needed, officials explained.

Council could also elect to keep the qualifications as-is but increase the proposed pay scale.

The city’s stormwater utility is up and running, collecting annual bills between $32 and $72 for homeowners based on the amount of impervious surface on the parcel.

Non-residential property owners are getting monthly bills in part because those fees will be much higher than those for residential units. For example, the Wal-Mart store will be charged $614 a month and McIntosh High School will be charged $553. The much smaller Ruby Tuesday’s restaurant would only be assessed $43 a month.

Those figures do not include “credits” that can be calculated to account for on-site stormwater detention and other factors.

In February, council approved a $1.45 million budget for stormwater programs, and the city has developed a $3.5 million capital improvement plan for stormwater projects that would be financed over a 20-year period and repaid with revenue from the stormwater fees.

All told, the city’s commercial and industrial properties will pay $208,000 a year in stormwater fees while residential properties will pay $268,000 a year.

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PTC Engineer? For what train?
mudcat's picture
Submitted by mudcat on Thu, 08/24/2006 - 6:30pm.

Are you kidding me? A certified engineer to check and see that stormwater runs downhill and into the correct receptacles.

The Assistant City Manager could do that during lunch breaks from his $115,000 per year job. God knows, he is not doing anything else.

Get with it Harold - cut this one off at the knees. It is a stupid idea. Grab the $500k+ you collect from us and use it for something important.

meow


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Sorry Mudcat, but I think...
Submitted by Reality Bytes on Thu, 08/24/2006 - 6:49pm.

...you may not fully understand what is involved here.

See, PTC Guy will tell you how messed up our system is. In order to make it right, you have to dig, and rebuild, and refit old stuff to work with new stuff...and replace it with new stuff.

An engineer spent four years learning how to do that right. Would you say that the sewer department doesn't need an engineer to make sure the pipes go in the right direction? You'd be surprised....

Now for my tangents...man, I bet that Assistant City Manager's just taking naps all day...what do you think? He probably doesn't do anything...hey, whatever happened to the Developmental Services Director position? Is anybody doing that? Hmmm.....

"Get with it Harold." Come on, you've got all the power, Harold. Use your mighty scepter to send these lowly ideas to the depth of inaneland. Let's just do that and not involve Judi, Stuart, Cyndi or Steve.

Oh wait! That was the last mayor....
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Please tell me how dumb I am. I appreciate all inane critiques....no really, I do!

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Correct, idontknow
PTC Guy's picture
Submitted by PTC Guy on Thu, 08/24/2006 - 7:46pm.

I worked with a key engineer, before, on redesigning one segment of one water basin system.

It involved a mini detention pond, three road feeds, regrading, resetting two culverts, adding 2-36" pipes under a road, replacing another 24" pipe with a 36" and redirecting all 3 into an area in which a large detention pond would be created and redirecting one ditch and refurbhishing another.

That was to fix ONE system that impacted negatively 4 communities.

But, of course, I am not qualified because I don't have the degree they want. Annoying.

But this verifies what I said before, being for $50 thousand that didn't have a bats chance of getting what the were demanding in qualifications. People of such levels were making double that.

Somebody must have listened.

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Keeping it real and to the core of the issue, not the peripherals.


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