PAWTUCKET — More than a year and a half after he was selected for the position, the Pawtucket Water Supply Board’s chief engineer, James L. DeCelles, finally has a contract.
The City Council voted to approve the three-year agreement Wednesday night.
The vote was unanimous, despite concerns raised by the city’s Personnel Board about two provisions of the contract: one allowing DeCelles to accrue sick time, the other compensating him if he has to interrupt a vacation to return to the state.
In a letter to the Water Supply Board’s lawyer, Personnel Board Chairman Kenneth F. Riley asked why, as a salaried employee, DeCelles should be allowed to accrue sick time.
Riley also questioned the provision offering DeCelles compensatory time off and airfare if he is called back from vacation in an emergency: “Will there not be a sufficiently trained individual able to act in an emergency, in the immediate absence of the chief engineer?”
The Water Supply Board’s lawyer, Joseph A. Keough Jr., said the provision allowing DeCelles to accrue sick time “was an item Jim felt was important” and was included in the contract as a result of the give and take of negotiations.
The contract provision guaranteeing DeCelles compensatory time off and airfare in the event he is ordered back here during an emergency was included, Keough said, because of the sensitive nature of the chief engineer’s job.
As chief engineer, DeCelles, 41, is responsible for a system that supplies drinking water to 100,000 people in Pawtucket, Central Falls and the Valley Falls section of Cumberland.
In 1992, when a high level of coliform bacteria forced customers of the Pawtucket system to boil their drinking water, then-Chief Engineer Eugene Jeffers refused to interrupt an out-of-state vacation and had to be ordered back.
Jeffers resigned as a result of the 1992 water crisis. In interviews yesterday, Water Supply Board officials said they didn’t know whether the contract provision guaranteeing DeCelles airfare and compensatory time off was included because of the dustup with Jeffers.
But Ronald L.Wunschel, who, as city finance director, sits ex officio on the Water Supply Board, said that because Pamela M. Marchand, who preceded DeCelles as chief engineer, had that clause in her contract, “we gave it to Jim.”
DeCelles is currently paid $89,500 as acting chief engineer. He will receive $117,500 during the first year of the contract, $121,025 during the second year and $124,655 during the third year, plus a retroactivity payment of about $20,000.
The City Charter requires that the chief engineer be a licensed professional engineer and says that the Water Supply Board may offer up to a six-year contract.
The board first offered DeCelles a contract in July 2006, but had to rescind the offer because he hadn’t yet passed the state’s licensing examination for professional engineers.
The board renewed the offer last November, after DeCelles passed the exam and contract negotiations were concluded.
Since then, the contract has been reviewed by the city’s Personnel Board, the City Council and the council’s Finance Committee, even though by City Charter the Water Supply Board has sole authority over the position.
“They didn’t necessarily have to submit it to us,” John J. Barry III, the chairman of the Finance Committee, said Wednesday.
“They did it out of an abundance of caution.”
Now that the contract has won council approval, all that remains, according to Keough, is for DeCelles and William W. Masuck, the chairman of the Water Supply Board, to affix their signatures.
DeCelles couldn’t be reached for comment yesterday. Masuck said the board is eager to keep him.
“He’s definitely been a credit and a merit to our system,” said Masuck. “He’s done a fine job.”