Nearly eight years to the day after then-Mayor Bill Boner appointed Marlin Keel Metro’s public works director, Mayor Phil Bredesen is preparing to announce Keel’s departure.
Bredesen will announce this week that he and Keel ”have mutually agreed“ on the director’s resignation from what is perhaps the most embattled of the city’s departments. Metro Council members and other city officials have said for some time that the department is poorly and inefficiently run.
Bredesen says his ongoing disagreements with public works about the planned Franklin Street Corridor are ”part of“ the reason Keel is leaving the department. ”My frustration with that is well known,“ the mayor told the Scene. Bredesen has been pushing for the new corridor tob designd as an urban boulevard, but public works officials haven’t executed the mayor’ wishes in their design schemes for what is now rferred to as the Gateway Boulevard.
While Keel will leave the department next Tuesday, he will continue to work for Metro, taking over the position of capital projects manager with the department of general services. That position was recently vacated by Peter Heidenreich, who is now a lobbyist for the Ingram Group.
To replace Keel temporarily, Bredesen is appointing Metro Development and Housing Agency’s Randall Dunn, who has a background in purchasing and project administration. Dunn, who can’t serve permanently because he does not meet Metro’s charter requirement that the department head be an engineer, will serve until a new mayor succeeds Bredesen. ”It’s such a key position that it needs to be left to the next mayor to make that appointment,“ Bredesen says.
