03-F Water/Sewer (5/15/03) - Laserfiche WebLink

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City Council W~er & Sewer Subcommi~ee May15,2003 Page 16 of Paris has been compared with by Mr. Plata. He said it is a very serious business to treat water and it has the most potential of anything that the city does to effect the public health and safety of citizens. He stated that it is the most potentially dangerous activity that we participate in. Mr. Malone said ours is a complex system and does not lend itself to simplistic comparatives. City Manager Malone pointed out, as the OMI people pointed out, all of these systems are different. He said that they are not going to come in and give you a standard contract and price. Mr. Malone said that they are going to come in and have you research for six months and tell them everything that you do and every kind of system that you have and spell out all of the parameters of what they are expected to do and then they are going to give you a cost plus price with an annualized CP! adjustment. He said in order to make critical recommendations other than incremental type suggestions that we take part in at budget workshops, he felt that if the city's committee and council is going to make recommendations without consulting with an engineering firm, then they actually need to visit these facilities and get hands on experience and explanations from the personnel that operate these systems. City Manager Malone recalled that when he took office as City Manager, Paris had a history of borrowing money, spending the money to build a facility like a water plant or a wastewater plant, and then totally ignoring the maintenance. He said that there were years when they did not spend money on maintenance and the water and wastewater plants were just rotting down. He said that when they rotted down, another study would be done and the plant would completely be rebuilt and that is very costly. Mr. Malone discussed a situation where our people were endangered in their work environment and said that there were no safety features. City Manager Malone recalled that at the wastewater plant, they had to climb down a wet board over the channels to lubricate bearings, and all that has been corrected. He said that more than ten years ago, they did increase personnel for safety purposes and to be able to perform the routine preventative maintenance, which is saving the citizens money. He said that it is saving our rate payers money to do this maintenance and this was not done before. Mr. Malone said that preventive maintenance will make the plants last a lot longer and, when you have to start all over, that is a big ticket item.