Ready to serve

The new city administration in Portland will look familiar.
Mayor-elect Randy Geesaman said in an interview this week he’ll only make one change in department heads in 2012.
Former wastewater treatment plant superintendent Bob Brelsford will return to his old job, while his replacement, Ron Krieg, will be retiring, Geesaman said.
The new mayor plans to retain police chief Bob Sours, fire chief Chad Aker, street department superintendent Jeff Harker, and water plant superintendent Doug Jackson.
“I did a lot of interviewing,” Geesaman said. “You’ve got to have experience. … I kept coming back to ‘if it’s not broke don’t try to fix it.’”
Geesaman is appointing Republican city councilman Bill Gibson and former Democratic councilman Jerry Leonhard to the board of works.
Despite the familiar faces, Geesaman said there will be changes in the way the city does business.
“I’m going to have council members be involved as liaisons with certain departments,” he said. “I think that’s a really good system.”
Geesaman also wants greater council involvement in constructing the city’s budget. “That’s going to change in my administration,” he said.
While the city will continue to make use of Fort Wayne financial consultant Greg Guerretaz as it did during the administration of Mayor Bruce Hosier, Geesaman foresees a scaled-back role for Guerretaz and more hands-on involvement by the council.
“He’s going to be used on a very limited basis,” he said.
Looking ahead to 2012, Geesaman cited several challenges facing the city:
•Clean-up and restoration of wetlands at the former XPLEX extreme sports site.
•The first phase of the northside sewer project.
•The potential clean-up of some brownfield sites in Portland.
•And projected declines in property tax revenues as a result of actions taken over the past few years by the Indiana General Assembly.
Geesaman said he joined Mayor Hosier in a meeting this fall with representatives of IDEM on the XPLEX site.
“Since 2007, there have been some violations there,” he said. The city is under an agreed order to have the site restored by October of 2012.
Geesaman said it may not be possible to have the work completed by that date, but he hopes enough progress can be made so that a one-time extension might be granted by IDEM.
“The major expense will be to haul away the dirt,” he said. “You could have a $250,000 cost just in moving the five dirt piles.”
Geesaman said he has been in contact with different engineering firms to get “a second opinion” on the northside sewer separation project. But he added that he felt it would be unwise to switch from the current engineer, Schneider Corporation, until phase one of the work is complete.
“Then we can re-evaluate all of that,” he said.
As to brownfield sites, Geesaman said, “We may have a solution to the old Sheller-Globe building at no cost to the taxpayers.” He said Energize ECI, a regional economic development entity, has $700,000 available in grant funds to help pay for clean-ups of former industrial sites. The old Sheller-Globe plant on South Bridge Street, site of a recent arson fire, would be a likely candidate for that sort of project, Geesaman said.
 At a recent meeting for newly-elected mayors, Geesaman and others were warned to keep a close eye on revenues and potential revenue shortfalls because of the state’s property tax caps.
“We could use our reserves up pretty quickly if we’re not careful,” he said. “I’m a big believer in being cautious.”
On other issues, Geesaman said he expects to be riding alongside city employees in various departments in the months ahead to get a first-hand view of their jobs. “You may see me on a trash truck at some point,” he said.
He had praise for his predecessor, saying of Mayor Hosier, “He put his heart and soul into the job.”[[In-content Ad]]