City to look to commission for assistance with contracts
Jackson just approved spending $10 million on emergency water and sewer repairs.
Now officials have to find the money to pay for them, and they’re hoping at least one of those sources will be the one-percent oversight commission.
Public Works Director Robert Miller said the crews should begin working this week.
However, he said crews won’t be able to do much on the city’s dwindling maintenance budget.
“We have some money, but a lot more needs to be done,” he said.
Miller said he plans to approach the commission soon to help fund the work.
“That’s the next step,” he said.
The commission oversees how Jackson spends revenues generated by a special infrastructure sales tax.
The commission meets on the second Wednesday of each month.
Commission Vice-Chair Duane O’Neill wants to know more about the city’s plans.
“We’ve got to hear what the plans are and what role we can play,” he said. “Sewer failures are devastating to an area and we have to take care of them.”
As of May 31, the commission had about $3.93 million in one-percent monies on hand. In June, the city will receive another $1.6 million in diversions.
Last week, the Jackson City Council approved two term bids to patch main breaks across the city.
Term bids essentially lock in contractors, materials and labor costs for a set period of time.
The bids approved by the council authorize the city to use Hemphill Construction, Utility Constructors and Delta Constructors to address water and sewer problems as they arise.
Each term bid is for one year, and authorizes up to $5 million for water repairs and $5 million for sewer repairs.
The contracts are needed to address a backlog of water and sewer failures across the city, as well as to supplement city crews, according to Miller.
“We have 82 water system breaks … and average two to three new ones a day,” he said. “On the sewer side … we’re operating eight to nine pumps to bypass sewer collection system failures.”
More than 20 of those sewer breaks are on the Northside.
As for workers, Miller told the council public works is down to two sewer maintenance crews and three in water maintenance.
In all, the department is short 35 workers in the sewer and 25 in water.
“Our crews are working 10 to 12 hours a day to keep up, extending to 16 hours,” he said. “It’s simply an unsustainable situation.”
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said the contracts needed to be approved as part of the city’s good faith agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Jackson is under a sewer consent decree with EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice. Under that agreement, the city has to make some $800 million in sewer system upgrades to bring it into compliance with the federal Clean Water Act.
The city entered the decree in 2012 and was given 17.5 years to achieve certain benchmarks and make mandated upgrades.
City leaders have brought on consultants in hopes of renegotiating the decree’s timeline.
Miller said the city also will approach the new “capitol complex improvement district” (CCID) board.
That board will oversee how funds are spent in the new CCID region, which takes in a large swath of the capital city.
Last year, lawmakers approved setting up the district and diverting a portion of Jackson’s sales tax revenues to fund public improvements within it.
The district will begin receiving revenues in August.
