Mel Brechin takes a bow

He's been around City Hall for almost 36 years.

On April 30, Mel Brechin, commissioner of engineering and planning, will retire.

Brechin, who oversees 46 Civic Centre staffers, will be thanked by City Council on Monday for his long service to the City.

Born and raised in the Township of Plummer Additional, Brechin worked in Kansas City and Woodstock before arriving in the Sault.

Council will also be asked next week to start the process of hiring a replacement.

Joe Fratesi, the City's chief administrative officer, has recently been looking into the possibility of merging road maintenance operations into Brechin's division.

Fratesi says there are several reasons for not making such a change right now.

For example, there's not enough room at the public works building on Sackville Road and an addition would have to be added there to accomodate everybody in a combined division.

Also, the engineering staff is currently extremely busy with a number of time-sensitive projects including the waste management review, planning for a possible new landfill site, construction of the Pim Street CSO tank and the East End sewage treatment plant and the direct link truck route.

Fratesi says whoever's hired to replace Brechin should be a qualified professional engineer or related professional.

"It is anticipated that this process will provide another opportunity to look at a possible reduction in the non-union ranks and that certain functions may be combined, although not at the commissioner's level," the CAO says.

*********************************** Stuff that Mel oversees

- preparation of design drawings for reconstruction of municipal infrastructure including roadways, sewers and sidewalks

- administration of construction tenders for the City's annual capital construction program

- implementation of the City's Geographic Information System (GIS)

- environmental work related to engineering on the City landfill, operation of the sewage treatment plant

- annual camera inspections of City sewers

- administration and enforcement of the City's building bylaw, property standards bylaw and the Ontario Building Code

- running the City's planning division, which provides advice to City Council, the development industry and the public

- making sure the heating, air conditioning, power and lights stay on at the Civic Centre, and that someone takes out the garbage and polishes the floors real nice

- setting up and re-cleaning the Civic Centre meeting rooms after the 3,500 meetings that take place there each year

********************************** SooToday.com photo by Chris Shoust