The Village of Orland Park board received a clearer picture on the proposed hiring of five part-time workers as quality assurance techs.
And the price tag was sliced by almost half.
At the Feb. 16 Committee of the Whole meeting, some trustees questioned spending $225,000 per year on five part-timers to go to various sites to make sure utility companies are following the village’s rules.
This became an issue in December when residents complained about people working in their yards without warning and crested when a Dec. 8 power surge knocked out power to approximately 300 residents in the Catalina subdivision on a freezing, snowy day.
The village imposed a fiber-optic construction ban that was lifted in March but hatched the part-timer idea.
Public Works Director Joel VanEssen introduced some new information to the board at the March 16 Committee of the Whole Meeting about how the part-timers would be used and that it would cost the village just $125,000 a year. The board approved kicking it up to the regular board meeting, where it was passed on the consent agenda.
VanEssen said Commonwealth Edison, Nicor, AT&T, Comcast and Astound have projects either going on or are in the works while Pavlov and Clearwave are requesting to work with the village.
“We’re expecting three to six utility crews each day out in the field doing work,” VanEssen said. “Any one of those vendors could be working with their crews.”
He said two part-timers would work every day and move around and cover several sites during the day.
“They will be hitting multiple sites where they will be doing the work throughout the village,” VanEssen said. “If there is a dead period, they could help with code enforcement.
They could perform other duties, such as helping the police enforce codes, removing signage and making other inspections.
The quality assurance techs would have the power to shut down sites if they are doing something against the village’s codes.
“This is unique for a municipality because this challenge with utility work is a challenge that every community is experiencing right now,” Village Manager George Koczwara said.
“When we put in our moratorium after that hit on the electrical lines, we were getting requests from other communities on what we are going to be doing and how we’re doing it.”
Koczwara said that the companies themselves have been cooperative but much of the trouble comes when they sub-contract it out.
“We don’t want to stop progress here,” he said. “Running fiber is a good thing. They just have to do it according to a plan and they have to do it with quality in mind.”