Wrightsville Beach public works director Mike Vukelich announced his retirement Dec. 15 after 15 years in charge of the department. His last day of employment will be Jan. 31, 2016.
His career has spanned more than 50 years, so retirement has been on his mind for a while, he said. He tried retiring briefly after his previous job with a Fortune 500 company but said, “It didn’t work well for me. I need to be active and interact with people and feel like I make a difference.”
In an email to town staff he stated the goal of the public works department is to be invisible to residents — “when you turn on the water it is there, when you flush it isn’t there, when you leave your trash out it disappears, the beach strand stays clean,” he stated.
Yet he is proud of many of his department’s accomplishments over the last 15 years, like operating the town’s water, sewer and stormwater systems despite the unique challenges presented by Wrightsville Beach’s low elevation, coastal location.
Although Vukelich is retiring, he doesn’t anticipate sitting around. He wants to travel, but most importantly, he plans to spend time with his wife.
“It’s very important to me, in the autumn of our years, that my wife and I get to spend time together,” he said. “I’ve dedicated 100 plus percent to my career and any success I may have had in life is in large part due to her and her support.”
Wrightsville Beach’s public works department must now move forward on several significant projects with a change in top leadership. Vukelich’s retirement comes one month after assistant public works director Steve Dellies resigned, but Dellies’ resignation was preceded by a two and one-half day suspension for sending an email to Vukelich citing frustrations like low staffing, low pay and a lack of support from town leaders.
Dellies position has not been filled, but town manager Tim Owens said filling Vukelich’s position is now a higher priority. Vukelich’s replacement will then help choose a new assistant public works director.
“Whether it be an internal candidate, or changing the organization around, or hiring an assistant director, I’d like the new director to have some say so in that,” Owens said.
He plans to advertise the soon-to-be vacant director position, but admitted, “It’s going to be really hard to replace that many years of service and that type of institutional knowledge.”
Early next year, while the public works department’s leadership is in flux, the town must move forward with a major initiative to decide the future of the its water and sewer system. Vukelich and Dellies were previously guiding an ad hoc committee in how to fix the town’s system to ensure better drinking water. The committee’s job is to recommend several options for the board of aldermen to consider.
Those options include water filtering techniques, purchasing water from other systems or selling the system to Cape Fear Public Utility Authority. All options are costly and will result in an additional water rate increase for residents.
“It would have been easier to have the director in place to help with that process,” Owens said, “but we’ll pick up and move on.”
Vukelich admitted the public works department is changing, but he believes the department will weather the transition.
“We’ve got a lot of new employees,” he said. “It’s becoming a younger department, but with the proper experience and tenor on job, they’ll do just fine.”
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