Scott Swanson
The City Council last week agreed to renew the city’s contract with Jacobs Engineering to operate Sweet Home’s water and wastewater treatment plant.
The approval was unanimous for Mayor Greg Mahler and councilors James Goble, Lisa Gourley, Dave Trask, Bob Briana, Susan Coleman and Diane Gerson.
The city is in the midst of a 16-year contract with Jacobs to operate, maintain and manage the plants, which provide drinking water and sewage treatment to residents. Jacobs Engineering, a Fortune 500 international technical professional services firm based in Dallas, Texas, earlier this year purchased CH2M Hill OMI, which had operated Sweet Home’s water and sewer treatment facilities since 2006.
The original contract was renewed in 2015 through July 30, 2031, with the option of an automatic extension for five more years at that time.
The 2015 agreement increases Jacobs’ compensation by 3 percent each year over the previous base amount paid by the city. The base cost the city will pay for 2018-19 is $1,061,270.
Councilors expressed interest in exploring whether the city could staff the plants itself at some later date, particularly after the new sewage treatment facility is built, and they discussed that option with Public Works Director Greg Springman.
He told them the city has no one on staff certified to operate the plants and “I think Jacobs is doing an outstanding job.”
Springman noted that there were no major violations of EPA rules during the past winter, although the city had to pay about $80,000 extra to deal with problems with solids building up in the sewage treatment process.
“I support continuing what they are doing,” he said of Jacobs.
Mahler said he’s concerned that costs are going “up and up and up.”
Trask said the cost of operating the plants “boggles my mind.
“We’re paying the same amount for a brand new plant as we did before, with a 3 percent increase a year. When we get this new plant, how many people is it going to take to run that thing?”
Mahler said the city needs to do a feasibility study “to determine the true costs.”
City Manager Ray Towry said that the new plant could be constructed with built-in automation, but that requires up-front capital investment.
“We need to look at all this stuff, just to answer all those questions at some point in time. Whether next year or some time after that, we need to do a feasibility study.”
Steven Haney of Jacobs told the council that the skill sets necessary to operate the new plant will be different, “higher than current staffing, particularly with biosolids treatment processes.
“Potentially, it will take a higher skilled staff,” he said.
Mahler noted that OMI-Jacobs has “done a phenomenal job” and “found problems we, as the city, might not have found.”
In other action, the council:
Approved a floor plan that included some minor modifications
– Voted 4-3, with Briana, Goble and Gourley opposing, to change the way it bills water users by reducing the base charge and increasing the commodity charge. The move would save money for people who use less than 300 cubic feet of city water per month, but raise costs for those who exceed that amount.
The vote approved a resolution that would increase the commodity charge for residential customers, which essentially pays the city for storing and providing stored water, from $6.50 to $7.86 per 100 cubic feet.
Commercial rates for three-quarter-inch services are increasing from $5.95 to $7.78 per 100 cubic feet. For industrial users, the rate increases from $5.21 to $7.54 per 100 cubic feet .
The base charge decreases from $26.58 to $22.91 for three-quarter-inch water users – the standard pipe size for most customers – in all three categories.
The purpose for the change, city officials have said, is to stabilize the city’s utility fund. State law requires that all funds in a local government be either balanced or maintain a surplus. The rate change, officials say, ensures that revenue levels in the utility fund remain positive.
Goble asked staff what had been done to look into a proposal he made at the May 22 meeting that the city look at what it could do if it simply produced as much water as it was capable and priced it to meet expenses, potentially providing much more water to residents at a similar price.
“When is my question going to be answered,” he asked during last week’s discussion. “I realize this is time-sensitive, but I also feel like I’ve been put aside because this could create more questions.”
Towry responded that staff would be looking into the suggestion, and would try to get back to the council with a response next month.
– Voted 6-1, with Goble opposing, to create an associate planner position for the Planning Department.
Planning Director Jerry Sorte told the council that the city’s “robust” search for a planning service manager had generated one application, and that person “did not meet the minimal qualifications.”
Trask asked whether the wage scale the city was offering resulted in less interest.
Sorte said that the pay may have been an issue, but he said it could have been timing or the city’s recruiting strategy.
He said he’d decided to take another tack, creating this mid-level position in which the successful applicant could be trained for the role they would need to play. The position would pay an entry-level salary of $4,092 a month to start.
Gerson asked about the four pages of duties listed in the packet councilors received at the meeting. Sorte acknowledged that there was a “long list of duties, but we are willing to train people.”
– Unanimously approved an administrative step to move the water utility fees the city collects into its fee schedule, which lists all other city fees for such services as land use processing, park and utility use, water service, passports, police reports, etc.
Towry said the move is an effort to make things easier for the public, who would then see a list of the fees and penalties the city charges all in one place.
“None of these fees are new, none increased. We’re just moving them from water resolution to the fee rates (schedule) so all the fees are together.”
– Agreed to move future City Council meetings from the annex behind City Hall to the conference room at the Police Department, 1950 Main St.
City staff told the council that since legal notices announcing the City Hall Annex as the location of meetings had already been published in the newspaper, the July 10 council meeting would need to be held in the annex.
They agreed that the first meeting at the Police Station would be held July 24.