City's new engineer has 23 years of experience
Will succeed retiring Ralph Swenson
KINGSTON, N.Y. » A professional engineer with more than two decades of experience has been hired to succeed retiring City Engineer Ralph Swenson, Mayor Steve Noble’s office announced Monday.
John Schultheis, who recently moved from Florida, will start the city job on Sept. 4.
Swenson, the public face of numerous city project, notable the multiyear Washington Avenue sinkhole repair, will stay on the job until mid-September “as part of the transition,” said Megan Weiss-Rowe, Kingston’s director of the communications and community engagement.
Schultheis will be paid an annual salary of $98,000. Swenson’s current salary is $82,217.
“John will be an excellent addition to our team and will be a great asset to our city as we continue to navigate major capital projects in the future,” Noble said in a press release.
Schultheis is a professional engineer with 23 years of experience in a wide range of civil engineering assignments, Noble’s office said. His resume shows most of his work has been in Florida and Virginia.
His most recent job was senior project manager for Dewberry Engineers in DeLand, Fla. Before that, he served as planning engineer for the city of Sanford, Fla.
“He has worked on projects in numerous cities and counties, including design and permitting to meet Department of Transportation criteria,” the press release states. “His technical skills extend to roadway, drainage, potable water distribution, sanitary sewer collection/ transmission, reclaimed water modeling, design, permitting, bidding and construction.”
Schultheis graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering.
Swenson served as the city of Kingston’s engineer from 1989 to 1996 and returned to the post in 2008. He announced his planned retirement on July 20.
In a 2013 interview, Swenson said the sinkhole repair project was particularly confounding. It opened in 2011, on Washington Avenue near the corner of Linderman Avenue, was fixed, then opened up again in spring 2012 because of a leaky 100-year-old stormwater tunnel that lies 85 feet below the road’s surface.
Other projects overseen by Swenson included the Safe Routes to School initiative, the replacement of the Greenkill Avenue bridge above Broadway, numerous sewer pipe installations, improvements to Uptown parking lots, repairs to a busted sewer pipe that sent hundreds of thousands of gallons of raw sewage into the Twaalfskill Brook, the reconstruction on parts of Abeel Street, a flood-prevention initiative at the city’s wastewater treatment plant, and the plan to replace City Hall’s roof.