Kelly Kenoyer
Sweet Home’s wastewater and water treatment plants are going to be handled in-house next year for the first time in nearly 15 years, instead of being run by a contractor.
That’s after a controversial decision at the Oct. 13 city council meeting, with Councilors Diane Gerson and Susan Coleman voting against the move, and Lisa Gourley, Mayor Greg Mahler, Dave Trask, James Goble and Cortney Nash supporting the 5-2 decision.
With the decision, the city will take over operations from Jacobs Engineering on July 1, 2021. Springman said it’s an amicable ending with the current contractor, and that Jacobs intends to work with them for a few months ahead of the shift to help with a smooth transfer.
The vote came after months of negotiations with a new contractor called Inframark, which would have replaced the previous contractor, Jacobs. That contractor had failed to meet the city’s expectations for maintenance, among other things, and the city started looking for other options after a 2019 audit showed numerous deficiencies.
Director of Public Works Greg Springman said the city intended to break the contract with Jacobs and switch operations, largely because the contractor “broke our trust” by failing to adequately maintain the facility. It has run the plant since 2006, and it will cost the city a 3% demobilization fee to break off the current contract, or a bit over $30,000.
After negotiating with Inframark to take over, city staff advised that the council instead bring the service in-house to save money, although it will take a lot more work and is slightly riskier when it comes to recruiting and retaining qualified staff.
“We project that the cost for Inframark would be a little over $1.3 million, and ours would be a bit under $1.2 million,” Springman told the council. “We have some internal staff who have shown some interest and aptitude, so it would do some good for our staff with upward mobility.”
City Manager Ray Towry added that Inframark “has been professional and accommodating” throughout the process, and that the recommendation is “not a note against Inframark.”
“This is a numbers concern for us in staff as we make this recommendation, pure and simple,” he said.
Jim Huentelman, director of business development at Inframark, spoke to councilors to plead his case, noting that the company was willing to work with the city to hand off the operation in five years, after the new wastewater treatment plant is completed.
He noted that hiring qualified employees for this work “is a very challenging task. We have a whole department that, that’s all they do.”
He also suggested the city hadn’t taken a “computerized systems management system” into account for its budgeting, which would cost Sweet Home an additional $100,000.
“we would, for no charge, upgrade that management system with the new equipment,” he said.
Asked by Coleman about this issue, Springman said Inframark’s program is much larger and more detailed than what the city needed.
“We would be using those tools on a smaller format,” he said, and the cost of that system was already laid out in the city’s budgeting.
Gerson wasn’t sold.
“I’ve always said I think we should do it in-house, but I hesitate that this should be the time that we do it in-house,” she said. “We have some expertise but not all expertise.”
But for Springman, it’s about more than saving a bit on the budget. Each bit of efficiency will save the city money, he said, rather than becoming profit for a corporation with headquarters out of town.
“Our electrical costs, our energy costs, and our chemical cost in theory should go down a third,” Springman said. “That money gets to stay in a fund and finance new projects.”
Taking the WWTP in-house also is an investment in the community, he said, as local hires will spend their salaries at local stores, enriching the local economy.
City Utility Manager Steven Haney agreed, and said investing in locals can pay off in loyalty.
“So if we can cultivate young people in Sweet Home, their kids are here, their parents are here, their grandparents are here, they’ll stay,” he said. “It’s living wage jobs for people in the community who are going to stay in the community.”
Haney himself is a Sweet Home High School graduate, now with over 20 years of experience in water and wastewater treatment, and one of 13 people in the state of Oregon with all his qualifications. The city hired him away from Jacobs last year.
It will take a lot of work to get the city staff ready to take over operations, Springman acknowledged.
For us to go out and start doing this, there will be some initial costs,” he told the council. “If I don’t point those out to you, I wouldn’t feel like I’d done my job.”
But he’s confident the city can operate the plants successfully and find local workers, he said.
“We’ve put our feelers out. There are a couple semi-retired people living in our community holding two and three certifications,” said Springman, himself a 35-year veteran in running utilities. “I think they’d be a great bridge for knowledge for two or three years.”
To City Engineer Trish Rice, the in-house operation is the right move. She predicted that the city won’t struggle with recruitment, even if its pay scale doesn’t match that of bigger cities. “Even if they’re not paid as well as other cities pay, as long as they have a reason to be here, and they like working here, they’re gonna stay,” she said.
Ultimately, the city staff won the day and convinced most of council to vote their way.
Gourley in particular was cautiously optimistic.
“Sometimes stepping off that cliff is hard,” she said, “but we have some very good staff.”
“I don’t think they would make this recommendation, with how much work it is, if they weren’t capable of doing it.”
The city will post the job openings for the new positions in early February 2021, and will hire staff in the months of February, March and April.
Gourley looked forward to the prospect of good local jobs. “That money over that length of time, we could be using it to reinvest in our community, and bringing those jobs into our community has a benefit as well.”