Trumbull sanitary engineering director resigns

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Trumbull County Commissioner Frank Fuda said he regrets that Rex Fee, one of the key members of the team that has built $70 million in Trumbull County sewers the past eight years, has resigned.

“I don’t think it was presented in the right way,” Fuda said of the commissioners’ decision Feb. 25 to have Randy Smith, Trumbull County engineer, take over the administrative position Fee held at the time. Fee had held the job since August 2007.

Fee gave a letter to the commissioners Friday resigning his position as executive director of the sanitary engineering department effective immediately. Fee has worked for the county 32 years. His salary was $79,673 annually.

He resigned a little more than a week after commissioners appointed Smith to take charge of sanitary engineering on a trial basis starting later this month.

At the time, commissioners said Fee and the two other administrators in the department, Scott Verner and Gary Newbrough, would remain in their jobs and answer to Smith, but there also was talk of eliminating the fringe benefits and vehicle allowance of one employee.

Fuda said he thinks Fee got the impression he was being forced out, so “someone should have sat down with him and talked to him” to dispel that notion.

The commissioners are working on a contract they hope to finalize next week spelling out the relationship between the county and Smith, who will oversee the two departments — his elected job, and the appointment as head of sanitary engineering.

Trumbull County has built the most or among the most sewer lines of any county in the state under Fee’s leadership — projects required under a consent agreement the commissioners signed with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency in 2006 to eliminate failed septic systems that have caused groundwater contamination in 10 communities, Fuda said.

Fuda added, “His [Fee’s] feeling is, ‘I did all this, and this is the reward I get is I’m being replaced?’”

Fuda said Fee was a “very dedicated county worker,” adding that he was a big reason that “over the past eight years, we did things that were impossible,” such as securing the funding and the approvals to build the Kinsman sewer project currently under construction.

But that same project has been a huge headache for Fee, his staff and the commissioners because of numerous change orders resulting from discovering storm sewers along the route that had to be replaced and petroleum-contaminated soils that had to be removed.

“The sanitary engineer’s department has accomplished remarkable things in addressing consent-order areas and modernizing our billing services,” Fee wrote in his resignation letter.

Fee did not return a phone call seeking a comment.

Commissioner Mauro Cantalamessa said he feels bad Fee resigned, but “as far as I know, he was going to retire.” Cantalamessa said Fee indicated in January he was thinking of retiring.

But Fee also told Southington-area residents during the commissioners meeting Feb. 5: “You have my pledge I’m going to stick around until you have water,” a project expected to take several years.

“He’s done a wonderful job. He’ll be missed,” Cantalamessa said. “We’re sad to see him go, but we’re confident in the leadership we have in place.”