They’re playing musical employees in the city of Austin, but it is the Development Corp.

Wednesday, June 07, 2000

They’re playing musical employees in the city of Austin, but it is the Development Corp. of Austin that missed the seat in the first round.

The DCA loses its administrative assistant – the city of Austin gets her; and Austin Utilities gets a full-time human resources director.

When the DCA’s administrative assistant, Trish Weichmann, gave her notice two weeks ago to take a job with a private company, the alarms went off at City Hall. Since the last budget session, Weichmann has been working half-time for the city, so her notice to the DCA would have effectively ended her city employment as well.

However, her notice was the catalyst that led to a solution of the problem of a shared human resources director between the city of Austin and Austin Utilities. On Tuesday, the Austin Utilities Board of Commissioners approved the contract for Kim Dunlop, who has been doing the shared duties for both entities, to work full time for Austin Utilities. Dunlop will coordinate the Utilities safety training program as well as taking care of personnel issues.

Also on Tuesday, the board gave the go ahead to Tom Tylutki, electrical services supervisor, to let bids on a new transformer for the central substation. Costs for a new transformer were estimated at about $380,000, but Tylutki advised the expansion, because of load growth and to lend more backup reliability to the substation.

The current transformer was made in 1949. The bulk of the costs will be paid for from next year’s budget, because that’s when the transformer would be ready, as it often takes more than a year for a company to build a transformer.