City spending $275K more to try to fix Water Works
TRENTON » Wade Trim is raking it in.
The Detroit-based civil engineering firm tapped to help the city’s beleaguered water department needs another $275,000 to fill for a year the vacant water utility director position, which officials said has been occupied by different city workers during public works director Merkle Cherry’s tenure.
The amount is more than two and a half times the $108,543 that Cherry is paid a year to run the public works department, which encompasses Trenton Water Works and five other divisions.
The resolution approving the amended Wade Trim contract goes before City Council for a vote Thursday. If it’s approved, it would bring the amount of the contract with Wade Trim to nearly $1.6 million, up from $1.3 million.
The total bill to fix the water department is more than $2.3 million when considering another 12-month contract worth $755,322 with Banc3 Engineering Inc. to bring on six staffers at TWW.
Officials contend this is the cost of rehabilitating the water department.
The original contract negotiated with Wade Trim was for the engineering firm to fill nine positions, such as chief pump operator and assistant water pump operator. The water utility director represents the 10th position.
For some time, the water utility director has seen a revolving door of fill-ins, Cherry said, with assistant public works director Sean Semple functioning in that role for some time as has Joseph McIntyre, superintendent of the city’s sewer utility.
Wade Trim will provide someone in that position who focuses solely on overseeing and addressing myriad issues at Trenton Water Works as part of a pact the city reached with the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Cherry said the water utility director is the “last slice of this emergent requirement” from DEP, which repeatedly slammed the city for staffing and operational deficiencies that put at risk the health of 225,000 customers in Trenton and surrounding areas.
The water utility director will oversee the filtration plant, customer service and billing and the city’s distribution system, said Cherry, who wants to “give more focus to an asset that is very important to the city.”
“My feeling is I think we’ve followed what is the most efficient way to get things in place to ensure we’re meeting the ACO,” the public works director said, referring to the administrative consent order with DEP. “We have a lot of challenges in public works.”
Those challenges have been well-documented and reached heights of hysteria as the city and the state’s most powerful environmental agency battled over the water crisis the past few months with DEP threatening to sue and Trenton’s mayor pushing back against the suggestion of a state takeover of TWW.
Municipal leaders from around the area weighed in on the controversy which led to the introduction of several bills to address TWW’s problems.
The city and DEP has since reached an agreement pushing back a deadline for Trenton to rectify issues over staffing, operation and infrastructure until June 29, 2018, or two days before Mayor Jackson leaves office.
While Cherry hopes to have the water utility director in place “as soon as possible,” he and city may face obstacles getting it approved as some city councilors are opposed to bringing on another high-salaried overseer.
They say that’s why Trenton has Cherry, who oversees six divisions in public works, including the water department.
“We got our own director,” South Ward Councilman George Muschal said. “They’re taking over the plant is what they’re doing. They just keeping asking for more money and asking for more money and asking for more money. They keep nickel and diming us.”
Councilman and mayoral candidate Alex Bethea is unsure why the amount for the Wade Trim contract continues to balloon.
“I thought it should have been included in the $1.3 million,” he said of the water utility director. “It’s not clear to me why we have to spend more. Until I get some clarity, I will be opposing [the measure].”
Cherry defended the addition of the water utility director who must have certain licenses that Semple, who has basically functioned in that role, doesn’t have.
The public works director said someone else on staff has the necessary licenses, meaning hiring a water utility director would bring another person into the fold with those qualifications to help stabilize TWW.
The city is already paying a pretty penny to bail out TWW.
In justifying the need for the water utility director, Cherry cited in a certification attached in support of the resolution the DEP’s Jan. 5 notice of violation “due in large part to the city’s ‘failure to maintain adequate level of technical and managerial staff to properly operate and maintain Trenton Water Works.’”
DEP has been on the city’s back to fix the problems, fueled by a late boil-water notice that took the city hours to issue in January.
The dispute between the two sides took on a conspiratorial tone when, in addressing the boil-water situation, City Council President Zachary Chester suggested former Gov. Chris Christie and DEP worked to sabotage TWW so Christie could get his “people” in at the water department.
Mayor Jackson followed up with a strongly worded letter to former DEP commissioner Bob Martin, sent two days after he left office, accusing him of mischaracterizing the city’s efforts to address the water issues.
Staff writers David Foster and Sulaiman Abdur-Rahman contributed to this report