Public Works can’t hold onto its project engineers, who flee for higher pay elsewhere.

If it weren’t for “all the politics,” working for politicians wouldn’t have been all that bad.

That’s how former Bainbridge city project engineer Tom McKerlick sums up his nearly four years with Public Works, a department now struggling to plug an employment leak amid a steady flow of budgeted projects.

“Engineers, they kind of think logically and see a project from beginning to end,” said McKerlick, who while he was with the city oversaw the design and construction of non-motorized transportation projects.

“But at Public Works, you get a project that might be a high priority over others,” he said. “You start working on it, but it gets tossed around like a hot potato and then dropped. Decisions seemed political.

“All the politics – that was a frustrating part.”

Detangling himself from the city’s red tape, McKerlick easily found work engineering electric street cars for the new biotech hub envisioned on Seattle’s south Lake Union.

McKerlick’s move to the private sector means more rungs await him on the career ladder as he tackles meaningful projects that move at a swift clip, without bureaucratic counter-currents.

The fact that his paycheck is 30 percent fatter is nice, too, he admits.

And there’s plenty to go around, with a host of new positions at McKerlick’s Seattle office and other civil engineering firms that are stacking generous hiring bonuses atop competitive salaries.

“It’s a hot market,” said Roger Mustain, who recently left the City of Bainbridge Island’s lead engineer role for a 60 percent pay raise, overseeing a $200 million U.S. Navy housing construction project.

“The big companies have a lot of work and can make things very attractive,” he said.

Overall, the U.S. government estimates that the civil engineering field will grow 17 percent over the next eight years. American universities, meanwhile, churn out nearly 70,000 engineers each year.

Even as young people queue for a place in the engineering school enrollment line, added outsourcing overseas and importing foreign talent have failed to satisfy demand, according to the National Society of Professional Engineers.

“My company’s constantly looking for new people,” McKerlick said. “The big companies are scrambling to meet all the transportation work in the region. It’s a good time to be an engineer.”

But it’s not such a good time for those in city government trying to meet growing demands for new bike lanes, road improvements, trail construction and sewer system upgrades – while losing engineers to the private sector.

“It’s an epidemic this year,” said City Administrator Mary Jo Briggs. “Engineers are being hired right and left by companies. In addition to the salaries, which are above what we can offer, we aren’t as appealing because there’s (less of a) career track here, with no assurances for the long-term.”

With another resignation announced this week, the city’s Department of Public Works now is down to just two of the five project engineers budgeted to keep pace with a capital projects list that grows every year.

The city expects to defer more than a dozen public works projects slated for this year, including non-motorized transportation lanes on Eagle Harbor Drive, Fletcher Bay road end improvements, construction at the Nikkei Memorial site, fish passage upgrades and an annual fix for water mains.

“We’re trying hard to keep up at a break-neck pace,” said Public Works Director Randy Witt. “I think the administration has a sincere commitment to get the work done, but we’re going to have to rethink our views on (employees).”

A large part of that rethink would include upgrading two “limited term” employees to full-time spots on the department’s staff.

“Limited term is always a problem,” said Witt, who has failed to fill several such positions after twice advertising the jobs. “Having more of these makes us look less and less attractive for good quality people who have an understanding of municipal government.”

Witt has also proposed a two-tiered promotional track to attract entry level engineers and experienced project supervisors desiring higher pay.

“Once a person’s hired right now, there’s little chance for advancement unless a supervisor leaves or retires,” said Witt, who said the city pays project engineers about $78,000 per year.

McKerlick, who worked under the one-tier system, didn’t foresee advancement anytime soon.

“One day I just got to thinking about where I wanted to be in five years,” he said. “I didn’t see myself retiring with the city and I didn’t see myself moving into a position I wanted to be in.”

Greater job stability and more opportunity for advancement will help, but city governments – and Bainbridge’s in particular – will have to work hard on other fronts to hire and retain engineers, according to Mustain.

“Cities will never be competitive with pay,” he said. “If they want engineers to come to a city where they’ll take a pay cut, cities have got to make city hall a really pleasing place to work.”

And that’s where Bainbridge has its work cut out for it.

“There’s a really frustrating attitude with the citizens and the council a lot of the time,” Mustain said. “I spent a lot of time soothing and calming everyone down rather than getting work done.”

McKerlick also said the high level of citizen involvement in city government sometimes translated into needlessly drawn-out and contentious processes.

“Bainbridge really is a little city and the ‘squeaky wheels’ can get a lot of attention,” he said. “In some ways it’s good that the city’s so in tune with what the public thinks, but we see projects through the eyes of engineers. When we get (projects), we prioritize them and want to finish them”

McKerlick pointed to his work on road upgrades along Wing Point Way, repeatedly pushed back over a decade despite significant safety concerns.

“Now when I get a project, the politics are already out of the way and the funding’s secured,” he said. “It’s just pure engineering.”

Mustain, after just two years with the city, had his own collection of “endless stories,” such as the repeated redesign of the proposed restroom at Waterfront Park.

“That one was ridiculous,” he said. “There was just this constant stopping, revisiting, changing. Engineers like to get things done, not just talk about it. But there was just this churning and churning that never seemed to get anywhere.”

Even small projects – like a delayed sidewalk ramp – can elicit ill-will from island residents.

“I got all these frenzied emails saying Public Works was screwing the community,” Mustain said. “But it was completely untrue. We had two open houses on (the sidewalk project) and curving the ramp was a simple solution. Yet they accused us of trying to pull a fast one on everybody, and the council reacted as though it were fact.

“People jumped to conclusions, and it seemed the council jumped along with them.”

It’s this attitude that seems to strip Public Works of its one trump card over the big companies – pride in doing work for the greater good.

“A hundred years ago, public works engineers were right up there with doctors,” Witt said. “They were saving lives by getting sewage out of the streets, building roads so people could get to market safely. Engineers touch everything in some fashion. Now a lot of that’s taken for granted. Fifty years ago, people were happy to have power lines. Now they demand them underground for aesthetic reasons.

“But there’s still that sense of pride you get because you’re working with the public on important things. It’s satisfying when people appreciate that.”