Belleville’s new city engineer says the job should be full time. Mayor agrees.
When Sal Elkott started out in June as Belleville’s city engineer, he thought he could make it work as a part-time job.
But Elkott, who started his own engineering firm in 2004 and previously served as the Stookey Township highway commissioner, said once he reviewed the engineering issues facing Belleville, he decided that he needed to work full time.
“It’s a little bit of a lack of wisdom on my part but I thought I would be able to serve and get things done based on a part-time basis,” he said. “This is not for half measures.”
Elkott was hired at $77 per hour. He’s since approached city leaders about taking on the job full-time, as his predecessors always have.
Mayor Patty Gregory agrees with Elkott and said a plan is underway to hire Elkott as a full-time, salaried employee.
“Sal is doing an excellent job,” Gregory said.
The plan to give Elkott a full-time position has not yet been voted on by the City Council. The city engineer’s position is a mayoral appointment subject to the approval of the City Council.
Michael Velloff, the previous city engineer, resigned as a full-time employee shortly after Gregory took office on May 1. Velloff was paid $102,000.
For more information about public employee salary across the metro-east, you can go to the News-Democrat’s public pay database at bnd.com.
Seeks additional staff for engineering department
Along with deciding that he needed to work full time as the city engineer, Elkott is seeking to hire a construction inspector.
The post was originally advertised to pay $65,000 annually but Elkott said the market is tight and he did not receive any qualified applicants. Now the post is being advertised with an $80,000 a year salary.
This person would be tasked with inspecting the city’s construction projects to ensure contractors are following plans and specifications.
One project on Belleville’s horizon is the proposed roundabout for the intersection of Freeburg Avenue and South Belt East, or Illinois 13, near the Belle-Clair Fairgrounds. Elkott said he could not estimate yet when construction would begin on this roadwork.
Former engineer consults for city
Tim Gregowicz left his post as city engineer in 2019 after serving over 13 years but this summer he has been paid to consult with Elkott to provide what Gregowicz calls “institutional knowledge.”
Gregowicz now works for Evansville, Indiana-based Lochmueller Group, which received an $8,000 contract from the city to provide engineering consulting services from Gregowicz.
The contract with Lochmueller was approved on July 19 by the City Council and the firm recently opened a branch office at 18B E. Main St. in Belleville.
Gregowicz, who worked for Town & Country, Missouri, before joining Lochmueller, said he agreed with Elkott that the Belleville city engineering position “definitely” needs to be full time. He also agreed with Elkott that the staff needs to be increased to handle the engineering needs for a city the size of Belleville.
Gregowicz said at one point during his tenure he had a five-person staff that included full-time employees as well as part-time contractors. The staff included a secretary and four people who handled technical assignments. He said the staff, which sometimes was boosted by paid, summer engineering interns, dwindled due to budget cuts by the city.
Elkott said he didn’t seek out the city engineer’s job but now he’s “glad” he accepted it.
“I have been fortunate that I have been offered this job, as reluctant as I was to take it on,” he said.
He believes in giving service to others and he saw a chance to do that in the engineering department which has “a lack of staffing” and “a lack of resources.”
Elkott said he is suspending his work with his own engineering firm while he works as the city engineer. He is based in the city’s office building at 407 E. Lincoln St. and you can enter the building from on the Washington Street parking lot.
Engineering dreams
Elkott, 60, grew up on the Mediterranean Sea coast in Tyre, Lebanon. His home had a courtyard where he could dig holes and he used popsicle sticks and wires to build suspension bridges across them as his first engineering projects as a child.
“I would buy a lot of popsicles and ice cream so I could save all the popsicle sticks,” he said.
Today, of course, Elkott’s engineering job has a lot more riding on it than the toys rolling across those popsicle stick bridges.
“It is a serious profession where you go to sleep at night thinking ... ‘Did I do everything correctly in the service of the people? Did I protect people’s lives, people’s future, people’s homes? Are they going to get flooded? Is the building going to perform?’” Elkott said. “So it’s a heavy burden put on engineers. A very heavy burden.”
Here’s how Elkott described his goals as an engineer:
“We want to solve problems. We want to improve our infrastructure,” he said. “If infrastructure declines, you end up paying for it in many ways.
“Then you get into a trajectory of decline to where you hit something called an inflection point. Then it becomes close to impossible to revive yourself as a city so we don’t want to get to that point.”
