Heber City is losing almost its entire engineering staff. Within the span of less than 90 days, two engineers are retiring and one is taking a new job elsewhere.
Speaking to Heber City Council at last week’s meeting, City Engineer Bart Mumford announced three people are leaving the engineering office before November, including himself.
“It’s been a great honor to work for you, for Matt, this current city council,” he said. “I’ve worked for many prior councils, mayors, and it’s been a great experience for me.”
The engineering office handles residential and commercial developments, most water projects, mapping, assisting with airport operations, and other city improvement projects.
Mumford’s been with Heber City Engineering for 21 years and will retire at the end of September. He started as the sole city engineer and public works director, then shifted to an engineer-only role in 2004.
He said he will transition to a partial retirement.
Cathy Bingham will retire at the end of October. She’s leaving an engineering technician role after working for city engineering almost as long as Mumford.
Staff engineer Timm Dixon left last week after just three months with Heber City. According to Mumford, Dixon will now be overseeing the Hideout public works department.
About the abrupt changes, Mumford said, “This wasn’t something that was totally planned. We were gearing up some additional staffing as we continue to struggle to deal with a lot of the growth that’s going on and all the different ramifications of that. We’re losing basically three-fourths of our staff, but we’re in the process of getting the word out. We’ll be bringing some new people on to replace everybody and hopefully have as smooth of a transition as possible.”
The departures leave only Russell Funk, assistant city engineer, in that office. As the only remaining employee, Mumford says the city will first look from within to replace him, so Funk will be considered for the city engineer role.
During the transition period, the engineering office will rely more heavily on a local consulting firm it already uses.
Heber City has posted advertisements to fill the open positions. In the meantime, city officials have said they’re weighing options for how to make up for the lost personnel.
