Opinion: It’s time for an outside review of city utilities

Sorrell’s reveal came Wednesday night during a meeting called ostensibly to seek input from citizens on whether the city should keep or abandon the bag program, weeks after he had already delivered the staff recommendation to the city council that the program be abandoned and a few days before the council is scheduled to vote on it Monday night. Sorrell was responding to questions from former city budget officer Kyle Rieman, who was in the audience and is now the auditor-elect of Boone County. Rieman was leader of the city finance team tasked by then Deputy City Manager De’Carlon Seewood with developing the never-used data that was collected from other municipalities and built into several possible scenarios for Columbia.

Rieman also cajoled Sorrell into assurances that whatever direction the city takes next with curbside pickup will be made with data-driven decisions to avoid making the same mistake over again. Sorrell told Rieman, and insisted to the audience several times during the meeting, that no decisions have been made yet regarding roll-carts or the future of curbside pickup in Columbia.

Not discussed was Sorrell’s presentation at a city council work session on Nov. 7, recommending the city transition to an automated residential curbside refuse program that would utilize nine routes, Monday through Friday, requiring nine CDL-licensed truck drivers making about 710 stops per day, two smaller trucks making about 355 stops per day, one major appliance route per day making about 20 stops and two bulky item and container routes per day; require free wheeled-carts – either 65-gallon or 95-gallon – for its 36,200 customers, costing about $2.4 million; lease 10 automated side-loading trucks at about $65K per year and three others at about $50k per year. Council gave Sorrell the go ahead to develop the legal agreements for leasing trucks and bidding and awarding cart contracts.

So there were three takeaways from this sparsely-attended public “input” meeting, none of them particularly new or surprising. One, additional light was shed for the public on why Rieman, who spent a decade as a change-agent in data-driven policy development at the state level, would run into a lack of appreciation at Columbia city hall. Two, the contempt city hall shows well-meaning citizens with these sham events to seek input on policy changes. And three, the casual aversion to forthrightness that permeates city government and unflinching willingness to bullshit its citizens.

Also this week, Water and Light finally came clean with what’s been know around city hall for months. The $23 million in badly needed renovations to the water treatment plant at McBaine that were approved by voters in 2018 are going to cost twice as much and might take 10 years to complete. This project should have been underway before the pandemic and completed by now. Several other upgrades to the water distribution system that were approved by voters for financing by bonds have either not yet started, are behind schedule, or coming in from bid much more expensive than planned.

City Finance Director Matthew Lue told city council to expect a downgrade of the city’s bond rating and explained another delay in selling the bonds that were approved by voters to finance the projects. Council will first need to increase electricity rates to shore up the Water and Light’s overall financial forecasts for the bond underwriters.

And of course, neither the city council or water and light staff seem to be showing much appetite for taking on what was $30 million in remaining improvements to the electric grid system that were identified as critical and approved by voters in 2015. That cost will have at least doubled and still requires determining the location of a new transmission line.

The inability to complete approved capital projects, move on to needed new projects, and manage an ongoing program of bond financing that spreads the costs over the lifetime of the project, has resulted in capital improvements being paid directly from ratepayer revenue.

With the city stumbling over curbside garbage pickup, water and electric infrastructure declining from lack of upkeep, staff unable to complete financed projects, politics interfering with decision-making and rates increasing steeply - talk grows of privatization. This would be a terrible mistake. Without the burden of a profit for shareholders, these utility assets – if managed effectively – provide a unique opportunity to lower the cost of living for residents, help businesses be more competitive, and make the city more attractive for economic development.

Hiring an outside management team is also a possibility. But what a sorry indictment that would be on our city council members unwilling or unable to oversee the type of effective governance necessary for operating these utilities to their fullest potential.

With Treece gone and the monarchy he was fashioning at city hall abandoned, the city council overcorrected and has since floundered in a resulting weak manager, weak mayor modus. But it has a solid majority bloc of four like-minded progressives who came to office seeking equity and social justice for the city’s least fortunate. Those are the same residents most disproportionately impacted by utility mismanagement and the resulting increased rates. On the flip side, they would benefit the most from a results-driven, high-performing operation that drives rates down. There’s every reason for council members to re-think their priorities and get these utilities attention and oversite more proportionate to their impact on city residents.

The first thing that should happen, immediately, is an outside performance audit to determine the effectiveness of the current operations. Obviously, all is not well in the management of this city’s utilities. An outside review would provide council members and the city manager information they need about issues that should be addressed. It would be helpful to utility management, with recommendations for improvements, ideas for mitigating gaps in performance and help with plans for achieving strategic goals. It would also help restore some public trust.

City council members can no longer sit by wringing their hands while hoping this situation will somehow improve or go away. It won’t.