Medford council debates administrator’s role

The City of Medford on Monday night approved a three-month contract extension with its wastewater contract operator as tempers simmered.

The move was necessary after Jed Petersen, the city’s administrative director of operations, failed the Class B wastewater operator exam for the second time. He’s required to wait 90 days before taking the test again, making him eligible in June.

That means the city will pay the contract operator $1,750 per month through July.

But it wasn’t just the extra money that had council members visibly angry, and Mayor Danny Thomas brought up the elephant in the room.

“Everybody believes this wastewater license (requirement) is in his job description,” Thomas said of Petersen. “It absolutely says nothing in his job description about being a part of the wastewater testing process.”

Councilor Amanda Mueller disagreed.

“We specifically talked about it when we were talking wage increases and rates at a meeting,” she said.

The council also provided “a gracious timeframe to obtain that license, and there was a lengthy discussion about that,” Mueller said.

“Yeah, we talked about it, but it’s not in his job description,” Thomas repeated. “We need him to get (the licensure); he’s trying hard. The test, we found out today, they made it harder after COVID. Very few are passing.”

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency instituted a new exam in March 2020, after the prior exam was compromised. Since then, the pass rate of the new exam has been minimal; the MPCA is taking steps to revise the test because of the low passing rate.

“I think everybody that’s sitting on this council understood that that was part of it,” said council member Chad Merritt. “Maybe I’m wrong, but it was my understanding when Jed got hired, that he was going to carry this license so we didn’t have to hire an outside contractor.”

Petersen’s position is a hybrid role that was created in 2021; it’s part city administrator, part public works responsibilities.

“That was part of the deal,” Merritt said, “to have one guy that would check all the boxes, and if one guy wasn’t going to check all the boxes, there was no need to (create the position). And it was part of the deal that he got hired at ‘X,’ and as he checked the boxes, then he’d get raises to cover that. That was part of his job description when we posted the job, and he knows it.”

Council member Craig Helgeson found the online posting.

“I find it hard to comprehend that we would have advertised a position that was different than our job description,” he said. “I have trouble swallowing that pill.”

Thomas reiterated what the paperwork said.

“It’s not what we wrote up, though, I’m telling you, point blank,” he said. “Here’s the one we’ve got on file; you’re more than welcome to read it, end to end. You tell me where it says anything in there about wastewater or water licenses.”

“Then somewhere, there’s a paper trail missing,” Mueller said, “because we’ve spent hours on this.”

Merritt proposed a special meeting to review documents.

“It needs to be discussed in detail, and we’ve got to pull all the paperwork up from when we posted the job and what we had in Jed’s job offer,” he said. “We’ve got to get to the bottom of it, that’s all I’ve got to say. It’s in some papers somewhere.”

Because the job was a new role within the city, the city council needed to pass an ordinance to make the position part of the city code. The ordinance is a legal process; city attorney Mark Rahrick said the paperwork would be relatively simple to find.

“Somebody find me some papers, then,” Thomas said.

Petersen was not at Monday’s meeting; a special meeting was not set.