Hilliard committee reviews engineering reorganization as city engineer retires

The Hilliard City Council Committee of the Whole on March 10 heard a four-year reorganization plan from Community Development staff designed to staff up engineering functions, prioritize asset management and prepare for the impending retirement of longtime city engineer Clark Rausch. Director of Community Development Letty Schamp told the committee she has agreed to assume city engineer duties when Rausch retires.

The reorganization matters, staff said, because much of Hilliard’s infrastructure dates to growth spurts in the late 1980s through the early 2000s and now is reaching the end of its useful life. Schamp and other staff described shrinking engineering headcount over recent years and stressed that stronger succession planning and dedicated asset-management work are needed to avoid surprise failures of underground infrastructure.

“Clark Rausch announcing his retirement at the April” prompted the proposed changes, a staff member who introduced the topic said. Schamp, citing her decades of local experience, said she and Rausch have been colleagues for more than 25 years and that she recognizes she has “huge shoes to fill.” She urged the council that the organization should not be contingent on any one individual and described efforts to capture institutional…