Problems at S&WB continue to flood the city agency
4th September 2018 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
How does a public utility in a major American city let its customers – especially the city’s citizens and small businesses – know that the utility’s administration hears their problems?
How does the department even begin to assure citizens that after months of inefficiency, waste, shoddy work, apathy and even ineptitude, the ship is at long last being righted, that the years of administrative and technological chaos are finally coming to a close.
In the case of the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board, the challenge strikes to the very heart of how a city and its people function and survive: Trust.
“When people feeling that the process isn’t being transparent and the system isn’t set up to be fair to them, there is a lot of trust that needs to be regained,” said the Rev. Gregory Manning, pastor of Broadmoor Community Church, said of the S&WB’s public image. “Credibility and trust has been lost. The people need to hear (city officials) say, ‘We hear you, and we take full responsibility.’”
As both a pastor and a moderator for the community organization Justice and Beyond, Manning has seen the often devastating effect of the S&WB’s inadequacies on the lives of local residents. The most recent flashpoint of public frustration with the board, and the one most cited by Manning’s congregants, has been the proliferation of what can perhaps best be described as glitches, both technological and human, in the board’s billing process. Some residents, for example, went months without receiving any S&WB bills at all; others have been shocked by individual bills that total way into the thousands of dollars.
As this has happened, the city threatened to shut off water service to delinquent account owners, including some of those citizens who say they’ve been among the victims of the aforementioned glitches.
The threats of service discontinuation for overdue bills were accompanied by an offer to engage in mediation and arbitration for citizens who wanted to challenge their bills. (Roughly two dozen accounts did end up getting turned off.) But with several thousand account holders finding their challenges backlogged – and coming to city offices to find overflow, anxious crowds of other citizens panicking over their bills – that process broke down earlier this summer.
But even beyond the numerous practical issues, Manning said that for many of the S&WB’s travails, the public – much of it struggling with poverty and subpar living conditions – often feels like it bears the brunt of responsibility for those problems. Whether it be correcting administrative billing errors or unclogging catch basins manually or paying tax money for proposed upgrade projects that never come to fruition, the failures of the department, say many, are being thrust on the very people that department is supposed to serve.
“Don’t put the burden on the people to try to fix things,” Manning said.
City Council President Jason Williams echoed Manning’s thoughts, saying he’s also become fed up and frustrated by the board’s failings and broken trust.
“The problems with the Sewerage & Water Board continue to disappoint and disturb me,” Williams said last week.
A major debilitation experienced by the S&WB has been its seeming propensity for shooting itself in the collective foot. In July, while thousands of citizens were flummoxed by irregular billing and internal financial reports stated that the utility had enough cash reserves for just 92 days of operation, S&WB interim director Jade Brown Russell ordered hefty pay raises for the board’s three deputy directors.
“In the midst of the crisis, to [give executive raises] was really tone-deaf to the needs of the people of New Orleans,” Rev. Manning said. “It’s an absolutely hypocritical thing to do. With the mismanagement of the agency, it’s just a slap in the face to people.”
The pay raises triggered Brown Russell’s removal as interim director by Mayor LaToya Cantrell last month. Cantrell brought on board Coast Guard Rear Adm. David Callahan, who formerly served as USCG human resources chief and as a Coast director of Personnel Command for the Coast Guard, to guide the S&WB temporarily until new permanent executive director Ghassan Korban could take the reins. Currently, Korban is an executive with the city of Milwaukee.
“The Mayor and the Board reached the only logical and responsible conclusion regarding the management issue,” Korban said in a prepared statement on August 22.
“Resolving the billing disputes and making immediate improvements to the infrastructure are my top priorities, and I’m eager to get started,” he added.
But the S&WB’s executive leadership has been shaky for a year since last summer, when heavy rains exposed the decrepit, crumbling status of the city’s drainage system and caused massive flooding across New Orleans. After a rain-induced deluge on August 5 of last year, the former S&WB executive director was pushed out of the position, as were several other high-ranking officials with the utility.
Accompanying Grant’s ouster were reports of hundreds of millions of wasted grant funding, lack of trained and dedicated employees, shoddy maintenance and administrative confusion, all of which led to last summer’s flooding.
The inundations have also led to other consequences for the utility, including a recently filed class-action lawsuit on behalf numerous property owners who are pressing the city for damages as a result of the flooding. In addition, a financial advisory firm, citing the utility’s shaky fiscal condition, earlier this summer told the S&WB’s finance committee that the firm is putting the brakes on more than $110 million in bonding for capital projects. The proposed upgrades would include repairs to some of the drainage pump stations whose failures helped cause the flooding.
Callahan will be the S&WB’s fourth interim director since last year’s flood events, and Korban will become the sixth director overall in just over a year.
City Council members, already rankled by the aforementioned troubles, became further peeved when S&WB officials failed to attend key public meetings, including the council’s Sewerage & Water Board Task Force.
With all of the turnover and recalcitrance at the top, City Council members have been struggling to get ahold of the situation and establish an open, productive line of communication with the utility. Councilman Joseph Giarrusso, the chair of the council’s Public Works, Sanitation and Environment Committee, said he sees potential for a turnaround at the S&WB.
“It is hard to have confidence in the organization with the revolving door of interim executive directors,” Giarrusso told The Louisiana Weekly. “However, it is too early to say we have no confidence until the new permanent director comes in next month and has a chance to implement some solutions to the challenges the S&WB faces.
“There are a lot of good people working at the S&WB that come in every day and do their level best,” he said. “Many have delayed retirement because they believe in the agency. But even the best employees need supportive leadership and to know what’s expected of them and how they are being evaluated.”
The council took a key step forward recently when it unanimously passed a resolution directing the S&WB to suspend all water service disconnects until Korban arrives and a comprehensive plan for moving forward is created, hopefully within 30 days.
Cantrell’s office wasn’t able to comment for this article before deadline, but mayoral spokesperson Michael “Beau” Tidwell struck a conciliatory tone in a recent statement to The Times-Picayune.
“In terms of the overall criticism of the institution and the missteps that have been made there, absolutely, she’s hearing people,” Tidwell told The Times-Picayune. “We don’t want, the administration doesn’t want, and I don’t think the council wants either, for there to be this adversarial, us-versus-them situation…We’re all in this together, we’re all pulling for the same thing, which is to make sure services are developed fairly and effectively.”
Rev. Manning of Broadmoor Community Church has been encouraged by recent developments at the S&WB.
“Mayor Cantrell has said there needs to be credibility and trust built back between the community and the Sewerage & Water Board,” he said. “But,” he added, “it’s one thing to say it. It’s another thing to do it.”
Manning said his church is advocating for the mayor and other city officials to hold public forums regarding the S&WB’s challenges, and he stressed the need for a council presence within the S&WB.
“We want to be seen as a 21st-century metropolis,” he added, “so let’s set the bar and become the model for how to deal with these things. Now is the time to develop a paradigm and a model for the future. We can be a model for other cities.”
This article originally published in the September 3, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
