Pawtucket
talks resume for engineer’s post
01:00
AM EDT on Wednesday, September 19, 2007
By John Castellucci
Journal
Staff Writer
PAWTUCKET — The Water Supply Board
has resumed contract talks with James L. DeCelles, saying it’s more than likely
it will offer him the chief engineer’s post, the top job in the Pawtucket water
system, now that DeCelles has fulfilled a City Charter requirement and become a
registered professional engineer.
In April, DeCelles passed the
16-hour examination that the state requires of professional engineer
candidates. The Water Supply Board subsequently voted to enter into
negotiations with DeCelles, who has been acting chief engineer since January
2006, when his boss, Pamela M. Marchand, left to
become chief engineer of the Providence water system, the largest in the state.
“I can’t speak for everybody, but
... I’ve been very pleased with Jim’s performance as acting chief engineer,”
said Thomas E. Hodge, the city councilor who serves as a Water Supply Board
member.
DeCelles is hardworking and fair and
has maintained good lines of communication with Water Supply Board members,
Hodge said, keeping the board apprised of the progress, or lack of it, in the
construction of the city’s new water-treatment plant, which is being built by
Earth Tech, a subsidiary of Tyco International, to replace the old plant on
Mill Street in Cumberland.
Hodge credited DeCelles with helping
the old plant continue to operate after construction of the new plant fell a year and a half behind schedule. “Gosh, we didn’t
think that plant was going to make it through the summer months,” he said.
City Finance Director Ronald L. Wunschel, who also serves on the Water Supply Board, said
DeCelles has given board members the good news and the bad news about the
much-delayed water-treatment plant project, which is scheduled to begin
acceptance testing early next month.
Another board member, Pamela J. Braman, said, “He’s given us updates, sometimes weekly,
during this Earth Tech thing. No one has done that in the past.”
This is the second time the Water
Supply Board has voted to offer the chief engineer’s job to DeCelles, a
40-year-old North Smithfield resident who has headed the North Smithfield water
department and been utilities manager in North Attleboro.
In July 2006, the board voted 5 to 1
to enter into negotiations with DeCelles for the chief engineer’s post, even
though he hadn’t passed the state licensing exam for a registered professional
engineer and thus didn’t meet the City Charter requirement for the job.
Braman cast the lone “no” vote, “based on the requirement of the
charter and not on personal reasons,” she said at the time.
DeCelles, who was hired as assistant
chief engineer, was acting chief engineer at that point.
“We screened him very carefully for
the assistant engineer’s job. But there was this requirement. I didn’t feel
good about overlooking it,” Braman said, even though
DeCelles had performed well and had an impressive résumé, with a bachelor of science degree in environmental engineering from
Norwich University in Northfield, Vt., and a master’s degree from Worcester
Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass.
Braman said she felt bad at the time about raising the charter
issue, but is glad that she did in retrospect, because it had the effect of
protecting the Water Supply Board in its choice of DeCelles for the job.