T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA Scott Harvey sits with his wife Jeannine Harvey while Mayor Kathryn Thalman proposes him as the new Service Director.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Mayor Kathryn Thalman proposed for the City Council to consider Scott Harvey for the new Service Director position. The proposal comes after a former prospect for the job decided the position wasn’t the best fit for him.

“Because Mike decided not to pursue the Service Director, he sent me a letter late Thursday evening. He reconsidered and said that he is very happy at where he is,” Thalman added. “So I made a phone call and asked Scott if he would be interested and again their scores were very close. And I am very pleased to announce that Scott is interested and I wanted to present him to you.”

Harvey has worked for the City of St. Clairsville for the past nine years with responsibilities such as mechanical construction, equipment operations and maintenance, overall maintenance of water and wastewater operations and systems, and direct contact with residents.

“I will tell you, 100% of anybody I’ve ever talked to where Scott has gone out to work on any project, they always call me and say, ‘ what a nice guy, he was there and explained everything, he’s very nice, very polite’ and that is appreciated it puts a good shine on the city,” Thalman said.

Harvey has also worked as a Foreman for Consol Energy and a District Manager for Coca-Cola, which gave him plenty of responsibilities managing and maintaining a staff.

“I was very impressed when we had an interview with Scott. He, like Jeremy, has plans for the future, he sees our city in the long term map. He understands that projects will overlap and have to be assessed and figured out of importance, but he also knows how to treat and manage people,” Thalman said.

She added that due to it being such short notice, she didn’t have the ability to put the paperwork together to bring this up as a resolution but still wanted to make the introduction and proposal to the council.

Councilmember Kristi Lipscomb asked Thalman if there was a proposed salary because it was not included in the initial email that Thalman sent to the council to which Thalman replied that no salary has been proposed yet.

Councilmember Holly West interjected, asking Harvey if he is eager to be present on site at the City Building during the transition into the Service Director position.

“Yeah, if you’re interested in my candidacy then naturally you’d want it to transition as smoothly as possible. I’ve worked for the city for about ten years, so I have a general knowledge of pretty much all of the projects that are going on.But I am not up to speed on the details moving forward because I am not in that position right now. But yeah, I’d be more than happy to get involved and figure out the timelines on the water projects and things like that,” Harvey said. “There’s a lot going on and I know about it but I don’t know the details. I’d be very interested in learning about those things to hit the ground running.”

Thalman interjected, saying that Harvey and her spoke about setting up a briefing about the bigger projects going on in the city. She apologized to the council again about the proposal being such short notice but she believes Harvey will be a great match for the Service Director position.

“Hopefully we can get legislation ready. If you guys could reach out to Scott and talk to him, maybe we could have a meeting before three weeks and look at having the resolution then,” Thalman said.

“It would be nice if we could have the numbers sooner than the legislation,” Lipscomb said to Thalman, speaking about the possible salary Harvey would be requesting.

Thalman agreed with Lipscomb and said that they will have it as soon as possible.