JACKS OF ALL TRADES SAVE CITY BIG MONEY.
Do you like the Christmas lights and decorations throughout downtown Plant City? You have the City of Plant City’s General Services Department to thank. The 150 displays show off 100,000 lights. Many of the decorations are 20 years old, and among the department’s tasks in the offseason is to rewire these with LED bulbs. In addition to the rewiring, the 11-person department will spend 1,000 man hours preparing the displays, putting them up, and tearing them down. The wreaths on the light poles look like normal, slightly larger wreaths that can be bought at any store that sells Christmas decorations. However, this isn’t the case. These are industrial grade—underneath the greenery is half-inch steel cable that cause the pieces to weigh 40 pounds—lifting and holding these to hang them is no small feat.
The Christmas lights are the most visable task General Services handles every year, but they do a tremendous amount of work every day that you wouldn’t notice unless you are a city employee and need something fixed.
The staff of General Services perform a variety of tasks including plumbing, HVAC, carpentry, locksmithing, and electrical work. They take care of 140 buildings within the city limits—30 of them are primary facilities like fire stations, City Hall, and the Police Center. Repairing sinks, doors, toilets, walls, lights, sockets, floors, ceilings—all those things that make you want to have your own handyman on call for your place.
Keeping this work in house saves the Plant City government millions of your taxpayer dollars a year. “Unlike a lot of other municipalities, our team handles every aspect of facility maintenance,” Jim Rini, General Services Manager, said. “So, we don’t specifically look for an electrician, or a plumber, or an HVAC person. We look more for a rounded set of skills—handyman, general contractor-type staff is really what we hire. I have a real simple philosophy, and I have probably said it to just about everybody I interview. I am not really concerned with what you know or what you don’t know. My number one concern is your willingness to learn something you don’t know.”
The reason for this is, especially when it comes to electrical, staff can be injured when something isn’t done correctly. So, if a job is something one of his staff is not familiar with, or not comfortable with, Rini wants the staff person to raise a hand so others in the department can teach the correct, safe way to do the job. Don’t guess. If you don’t know it, don’t guess, and don’t be afraid to ask a question.” he said. “Again, you can teach somebody if they want to learn. There are other people that think, ‘I have been doing this long enough and you are not going to teach me anything.’ They don’t usually last very long. It is a close-mindedness that just doesn’t work.”
Among the additional responsibilities the jacks of all trades in the General Services Department handle are servicing the ponds in the city, acquiring gas, and replacement equipment. The team also supervises contractors like janitorial service, pest control, and the company that provides the fleet mechanics who service over 800 City vehicles units.
This wide-ranging scope of work concentrated in General Services gives taxpayers the most bang for their bucks. “Every year I am trying to figure out ways to do more for less money,” Rini concluded.
