Thompson to run New Albany Street Department

By ERIC SCOTT CAMPBELL
Eric.Campbell@newsandtribune.com

The longtime union president for Street Department workers will become their boss in 2008, New Albany Mayor-elect Doug England has decided.

England chose Mickey Thompson, a 14-year public-works employee, to replace Chuck Simons, an accountant Mayor James Garner appointed in August 2006 to a three-month interim stint that became permanent. Simons said Wednesday he was surprised and disappointed to be shut out.

England also named confidant John Wilcox his director of operations. Like predecessor Anthony B. Toran under Garner, Wilcox was campaign manager for the successful mayoral bid.

Thompson’s eighth and final year as local American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees president expires as his new job begins Jan. 1. He said he’d focus on reassigning more workers to cleaning and maintaining road surfaces. The department has wrestled with a budget deficit for years.

“The guys are staying pretty tied up trying to run behind sanitation [trucks] and pick up what they don’t pick up,” Thompson said.

Thompson also vowed to be “a little more employee-friendly” than Simons has been.

“We had a lot of problems with him when he first came in — I don’t know if it was the fact he didn’t understand the contracts,” Thompson said. “I believe he had good intentions ... but he alienated most of the guys right away. Hopefully, I can avoid that.”

Simons denied that characterization, saying some employees told him personally they felt treated well.

“As far as the employees are concerned, I alienated nobody but Mickey,” Simons said. “We had the right to put people to work. We went tooth and nail over it on several occasions. ... Out of 22 people [in the department], there’s probably four or five that their feelings were hurt.”

From the feedback Simons had heard, he was confident he’d be retained.

“Everyone had commented on how good a job I had done in the short year I had been there. I just assumed he wanted to have something for me in the future,” Simons said.

Instead, he got the bad news in a letter on Friday.

“For somebody that supported him in the campaign after the primary, I just expected a little bit better treatment than that,” said Simons, who has no other employment plans yet.

Wilcox said the England camp “would have preferred that it not be done by mail,” but noted that he had tried to see Simons at department headquarters four times and never found him in the office: “There was no opportunity to meet in person.”

Wilcox has logged decades of government service, including a job in New Albany Mayor Warren Nash’s administration from 1972 to 1975.

Read more at the New Albany Tribune online.