Water Department wants to milk its customers again

Newark City Water Department is again seeking permission from city council to milk citizens for more money. The service committee has been asked for its blessings to 1) build a backup generator and 2) provide an automated meter-reading system so "workers would be free to concentrate on other responsibilities." All this for just $5 million.

Utilities Superintendent Roger Loomis was quoted in an Advocate article as saying that Newark needs to build a $3-million generator because AEP no longer finds it "economically feasible" to maintain electric service and so now Newark would be expected to pay AEP to maintain the line, but the cost of that is unknown.

Nobody knows how much it would cost, but they want a $3 million generator just in case AEP's cost would be more?

Whoa. What kind of public-money management are we getting here?

In the first place, seems to me that AEP would be under some kind of PUCO rule to provide necessary lines wherever they're needed.

In the second place, how can anybody make a responsible decision on whether to build a generator unless those costs can be compared to paying AEP to maintain electrical service - if indeed the city would be required to pay extra? (If Loomis doesn't know how much, how does he know it would be anything at all?)

Oh. There was also a hint about AEP reliability. That's what I always thought those big tanks on Horn's Hill were for - to supply the city when there was a problem with the pumps and stuff. And anyway, how many hours a year has AEP's service to (whatever?) been out of service?

As for the automated meter reading system to free Water Department workers so they can "concentrate on other responsibilities:" Did anyone ask what specific responsibilities these workers will concentrate on, once they are free?

This is so typical of government: not even think of bringing the same services to customers with fewer employees by a $2-million modernization, but instead spending $2 million so the same number of employees can find some other make-work to keep them on city payroll. That kind of "planning" (meaning making an end-run on citizens) is partly why citizens are ticked off at government.

The trouble with the water department is that it has - as have the courts and the health departments - shucked off oversight by administrative officials (council and the county commissioners). They have graduated to their own little worlds of self-oversight because they are presumed self-sufficient; each can do its own selective milking of citizens, while not being made to justify how they handle public funds.

As I remember how things usually go, city council rubber-stamps any and all water/sewer department milk-the-customers requests because council doesn't have to find the money, so what do they care?

This $5-million milking proposal would be an excellent place for council to start checking the facts, to get the numbers from AEP, and to find out whether the $2-million automated meter-reading system is really going to save money or add to the overall cost.