Following the announced retirement of longtime Westbrook Public Services Director Tom Eldridge, city officials have introduced a plan to restructure the roles of some city department heads as a cost-savings measure.

City Administrator Jerre Bryant announced Saturday that City Engineer Eric Dudley will now take on a dual role of director of public services and engineering, while City Planner Molly Just will be charged with directing both the planning and code enforcement departments.

According to Bryant, Arty Ledoux, the longtime deputy director of public services, will “have his role expanded” to director of operations for Westbrook Public Services.

In his pitch to the Finance Committee during the fiscal year 2015-16 budget discussion, Bryant said the moves would save the city roughly $100,000 in salaries and benefits.

Next year’s proposed city budget is $24.7 million. Proposed city expenses are up $554,351, but with increased revenues of $236,306, the city’s tax needs are up 1.6 percent. Combined with the school budget, the city’s property tax rate is slated to rise by 94 cents. However, the city’s portion of that uptick is 10 cents.

On Saturday, Bryant said the department-head shuffle is one of the reasons for the limited increase.

“In the current economic and political times in Augusta, you don’t get to a 10 cent increase without making some changes,” he said.

Eldridge, who is retiring in May after 43 years at Westbrook Public Services, was the department’s director since 2004. Bryant said Eldridge was a proponent of having a “stronger engineering presence” in the public services facility, where Dudley will move.

According to Bryant, when Eldridge was hired as director in 2004, Dudley was the No. 2 candidate. Dudley has had his role expanded in prior years, as well, taking the helm of both engineering and code enforcement, as well as municipal building maintenance and sewer maintenance, which fall under the public services umbrella.

On Tuesday, Dudley said he began his tenure as city engineer with four years at the public services facility, until shifting into City Hall to work more closely with code enforcement.

When the new $8.7 million public services building is complete, all of public services will be consolidated under one roof, including wastewater, which Dudley has overseen.

“I’ve always been involved in some of the work public services did from down here,” Dudley said, referring to City Hall. “As I move there, I’ll still be involved with things that happen here.”

City Councilor John O’Hara asked city administration how the engineering department would be affected, especially as the planning department receives new projects to review.

“Planning will now have no civil engineer they can go to in the next office, and in public services, Eric’s time will be consumed,” he said. “Hopefully, we won’t lose a step, but if we do, how do we get that back?”

Bryant said Dudley will still receive plans to review, but will receive them at the public services facility. He said public services, which works most hands-on with the city’s infrastructure, will now have the engineering expertise in house.

Dudley said Saturday that there is language in the city’s ordinance to allow the city to outsource engineering services, if needed, to project applicants.

“Then we can evaluate if there’s other tweaks that need to be made,” he said.

The change was not solely based on cost savings, however, Bryant said.

“We feel that this is an effective use of our existing staff and talents,” he said, adding that in crafting next year’s budget, the city is trying to get a jump on the next few years, as well.

A recurring theme in budget discussions so far has been uncertainty surrounding state revenues, based on Gov. Paul LePage’s proposed budget. If LePage’s proposals are enacted in the Legislature, Westbrook will lose some $1 million in municipal revenue sharing through the next two budgets.

“We’re going to look back on this year, and say this was the easy year,” Bryant said. “We may be dealing with fewer resources next year than we are this year.”

The last few years, Bryant said, as budgets have proven to be more challenging, the city has asked its personnel, and especially department heads, to do more.

But as one department head position was eliminated in next year’s proposed budget, the city will be funding two chiefs in the public safety building, a return to the two-chief leadership format. The city also recently hired a new deputy fire chief, Steve Sloan.

The cost increase of having the two chiefs is about $99,000, but the combined police and fire department budget is up $58,000 next year.

Earlier this year, city officials announced a plan to stick with two separate chief roles for both the police and fire departments, (Janine Roberts and Andrew Turotte, respectively), which came a few months after former Public Safety Director Mike Pardue announced his resignation in September 2014.

The city had been utilizing a consolidated director of public safety position, but Bryant said the return to separate police and fire chiefs has worked “very, very well.”

“With the separate structure, we thought the department’s needs would be met much better,” he said, adding that there has also been positive feedback from other personnel in the departments.