Stewart Nelson

There is a grease board on the wall in Systems Planning at Larcom that staff use to keep track of who is “in” or “out” at any given time. Staring at the board prior to my meeting yesterday with Craig Hupy, (rhymes with “guppy”) Manager of Systems Planning I tried to figure out what all these Managers, Coordinators, Analysts and Senior Engineers had in common. My initial impression was that after the “Big Bang” reorganization the City went through four years ago, the people responsible for putting the jigsaw puzzle back together simply lost interest while there were still 8 “extra” pieces that did not seem to fit into the puzzle. Out of time and out of money they just lumped these disparate offices into a corner and grabbed a “senior”, Senior Project Manager, Craig Hupy and made him Manager.

As usual my superficial analysis was for lack of a better word, “superficial” and after an hour of visiting with Craig I learned that the “extra pieces” indeed have something in common…they were critical pieces in the reorganization that demanded the best and brightest and my guess is that reorganization actually started with Systems Planning and worked outward.

A more astute observer would have noticed that the color of the “8 pieces” is Green and actually that is the common denominator of these various offices; Energy, Water Quality, Solid Waste, Storm Water, Forestry and Natural resources and indeed they were staffed with the best and the brightest! How lucky we are to have staff dedicated to disciplines other cities only dream about. Digging deeper into Craig’s background I learned that his “real passion” is pipes! What better qualifications could you have in a municipal project engineer? I suspect that instead of watch at retirement we will have to buy him Backhoe!