410 Forum — News
No Two Days The Same: 10 Hours With Hudson's Public Works Director
By Mindy Day
My headlights revealed one pickup truck as I pulled into the parking lot at town hall. A dim glow lighted the farthest window, where Tim Hopwood was already hard at work sifting through e-mails. His labors for the town of Hudson begin around 6:30 a.m., and as the public works director, he never really knows what each 10-hour workday has in store for him. He sits at his computer each morning in one of three cubicles nestled in the main room of the town hall. He methodically reads over project bids, materials lists, work orders, maintenance requests and frantic pleas from contractors asking him to help move projects along before deadlines inevitably arrive. The mouse clicks and the man sighs, signaling the end of one e-mail and the beginning of another. Shelves hold piles of binders with titles like “Budget 2009,” “Math Formulas,” “Utility Calculations,” “Small Water Systems” and “Water Utility Guide.” “Still awake?” he asks over his shoulder, then continues clicking and sighing. After he’s had enough with the e-mails, he starts on a list of questions for the maintenance worker interviews he’ll be conducting later in the week. It’s government work, so wording is important. Corey Hoffman, the town attorney, won’t be available to advise him for another few hours, but Hopwood wants something started anyway. “See, hear, touch,” he ticks off the qualifications on his fingers. “Do we care if they smell?” he asks his computer screen. By 7:30 a.m. it’s light outside and Hopwood drives his pickup two blocks east to the tiny building that houses his three-man maintenance crew. Robbie Dodge, the one in charge of code enforcement, is the only one there. Hopwood picks up a gas card and the keys to his work truck and drives out to do one of few daily routines. He visits the water storage and treatment facilities to check gauges that few can decipher and take down the data in his daily log. The chlorine analysis machines need new bottles of vinegar; replacing them from a stash of new bottles on the floor is his last duty before he leaves. “Vinegar keeps the reactors from corroding,” he explains on his way to the gas station. “And you can make pickles.” At the wastewater lagoons, he checks more gauges in buildings that are smaller than most American’s clothes closets. He points out the geese that huddle by the edge of the lagoon. Dodge is at town hall when Hopwood drives in a little after 8 a.m. Hopwood delegates a less desirable job to Dodge, who gets to work pricing new plate compactors, finishing rollers and air compressors. Hopwood decides to drive over and see what the Ritchie Bros. auction has up for sale the next day. It’s cold and windy at the auction site, and crews are spraying and grating the driveways in preparation for the following day. Hopwood searches the inventory for an hour looking at pickups with plows and generators and other available equipment he would buy if he could afford. “This is one thing Wichita would never let me do,” he said of his 20-year career in Kansas as he walked up one row of yellow and white pickup trucks. “If I ever bought anything there, I had to buy it new. That’s what’s different about working for a small town.” After looking it all over, he registers at the counter, where women in orange and black Ritchie Bros. polo shirts seem to tumble over each other. They’re pleasant women, but hurried. We get a black Ritchie Bros. hat for our troubles, and then drive back to Hudson. On the way back, Jerry called from the new wastewater plant construction site, where they hope to have “dust blowing” by the next day, if all the paperwork is in order by that evening. Jerry’s guy from the office called, but Hopwood wants to know who gave the office guy the go-ahead, just to be safe. After lunch at Subway, Hopwood is back at the office. People come and go, adding papers to the growing piles on Hopwood’s desk. His favorite afternoon pastime is picking on the assistant town clerk, Rachael Arnold. “I’m not mean,” Hopwood argues after an argument with Arnold over where the community garden should be. “It’s just not high on my list.” “I’m on the events committee,” Arnold says over her shoulder. “It’s like, number one on my list.” “That doesn’t make me a mean person,” Hopwood says as she walks away. “Mindy, tell her I’m not mean.” He grins. By 4 p.m. Hopwood is ready to go home. He drives out to check on his maintenance men one more time and pick up his own truck, then lays out his list of interviewees to call for the next day and heads off toward home. Info Box: The Hudson town employees are eagerly awaiting their chance to build and move to a new location further east on Highway 52. Until then, Hopwood’s project is to rent a trailer and hire an electrician to wire it up so he and his maintenance people can move out of town hall and spread out a little more.
