City leaders are working to integrate the Sewerage and Water Board (SWB) into city operations.
The utility will function as a city department. It’s the next step after city council gained authority over the utility in August.
Leaders hope to have the SWB fully integrated by 2028.
Special Counsel to Mayor Helena Moreno, Andrew Tuozzolo, gave a presentation at a meeting Thursday on their plans for the integration process.
Some of the initial priorities include appointing a transition officer, amending SWB bylaws and finalizing a cooperative endeavor agreement to share personnel, equipment and funding between the two entities.
“We want to be able to share our equipment, share the resources between these two entities so that we don’t have to wait for something like, ‘Oh, that’s their thing. We have to wait for them to do it.’ No, this is everybody’s work. It’s not two cities, it’s one city. We’re all working together,” Tuozzolo said.
Tuozzolo said this could save millions of dollars that could be put back into things like repairing roads.
The administration is also looking at developing a parcel fee. It would apply to tax-exempt properties. Those paying property taxes would not be impacted.
“We need to make sure there’s a way for revenue to come from these parcels, 40% of the parcels that don’t pay into the system, on drainage, on surface infrastructure. Let’s figure out a way that they can start contributing to this,” Tuozzolo said.
During the meeting, city council members pressed SWB leadership on delayed repairs and customer complaints going unanswered.
They addressed the recent water main break on Killdeer Street that caused a tree to collapse. The impacted resident had initially made a complaint about a leak in May. The leak caused the tree to collapse on Sept. 1.
“What happened on Killdeer is not acceptable,” SWB Executive Director Randy Hayman said.
Council Vice President Matthew Willard said it’s hard to get a response from SWB, even as an elected official.
“We’ve reached out to SWB for about 40 residents in the city,” he said. “To date, we still have 15 outstanding requests that go back as far as February. Five of those requests have never been acknowledged by SWB.”
Councilmembers suggested having a dedicated customer service representative for each district, and having an arborist on staff.
READ MORE:How leaders plan to integrate Sewerage and Water Board into city operations
