3–minute $1.1 Million Cost Savings Challenge to Shorewood Council

Upon hearing resident Barry Brown’s 3 minute speech during the city council meeting of August 25, 2025 we requested Mr. Brown to provide his documentation to SCA for a follow-up story. Here’s what you need to know, in his words:

After pulling monthly financial data for nearly 4 years, I found Bolton & Menk (B&M) billed the City of Shorewood $1,402,923 or an AVERAGE $382,268 per year for miscellaneous engineering services. Subsequently I had a conversation with the city engineer consultant Andrew Budde on September 4^th, 2024 regarding these services to get a better understanding of the level of engineering effort required for 7 engineering categories and the average annual billing by B&M for these services:

Pond Maintenance ($18,311/yr.)
MS4 Administration ($15,456/yr.)
Sanitary Sewer Cleaning, ($10,850/yr.)
Catch basin & Culvert Repair ($21,356/yr.)
GIS Services ($49,042/yr.)
General Engineering ($113,064/yr.)
Mill & Overlay ($153,663/yr.)

During our conversation Mr. Budde explained the level of effort and engineering qualifications to accomplish these tasks and had this to say about each category:

Mill & Overlay ($153,663/yr.): Andrew indicated city staff can take over Mill & Overlay work once they are up to speed but would still need to rely on Bolton & Menk for some consulting work such as water drainage, manhole placement and fixes.

General Engineering ($113,064/yr.): The city’s contract requires Andrew to be on site 32 hours a week (most cities don’t do it this way). Andrew says he can work remote and the city can contract for whatever amount of hours they need. Being on-site he gets pulled into many conversations with staff and residents – at least 5 residents a week. He takes calls, answers emails and questions. Most months Andrew does not reach 32 hours of billing per week or 128 hours per month at $95/hour or $12,160. Opinion: It seems like hours and billings can be reduced significantly by discussing protocol with staff and showing some constraints.

GIS Services ($49,042/yr.): This billing entails recording data into the GIS system (not retrieving). The city has not kept up with managing/recording utility data in the past.” He defined it as catch-up administrative work.

Catch Basin Culvert Repair ($21,356/yr.): Similar to sanitary sewer access easement and right of way. Most culverts are replaced as they are rusting and require full replacement.

Sanitary Sewer Cleaning ($10,850/yr.): The city has 40 miles of sanitary sewers. 30 miles can be reached by public works employees with standard pumping equipment. 10 miles of sanitary sewers require access easements or right of way agreements with residents. This requires GIS lookup and recording. This is a catch-up project as some sanitary sewers had not been cleaned for 20 years according to Public Works records.

MS4 Administration ($15,456/yr.): This is a Federal EPA program. It’s a lot of paperwork. The city has chosen to do the minimum amount of responsibility. 1.) Inform residents via website 2.) Public participation through feedback on the website 3.) Tracking bad discharges ranging from lawn clippings to tanker spill. Andrew says Chanhassen has a drainage engineer to monitor and complete federal requirements.

Pond Maintenance ($18,311/yr.): The city has approximately 50 ponds (holding ponds) whereby the ownership varies by city, county and state so B&M has to research to establish ownership/responsibility for researching contaminants. Once ownership is determined then sediment testing must be done to determine if the pond needs to be remediated. This may take wetland permitting, right of way passages or negotiating with homeowners to use property for a pond.

Although each service carries varying levels of engineering skill, according to Andrew Budde, most if not all, could be accomplished by a qualified staff engineer. Assistance could also come from the newly hired full time administrative assistant.

In conclusion, based on the staff’s salary survey from your work session documentation even at the highest salary for a staff engineer of $122k and with benefits $150,000. Over time this could save the taxpayers $230k per year or more than $1.1 Million over 5 years. I urge the council to thoroughly explore this avenue – one that continues to utilize the highly skilled staff at B&M for the most complicated projects augmented by a new staff engineering position.