City Council to audit water, sewer service

By BRYAN GILMER

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 26, 2001

ST. PETERSBURG -- The City Council reached a consensus Thursday to audit the management of the city department that provides water and sewer service to city homes and businesses. It may also study the system that manages the stormwater collection system.

The city charter requires an outside management audit of the city administration every two years. City attorney John Wolfe interprets that to mean that the council can choose to audit just a section of the administration, so the council decided to pick one.

The charter-required audit is now overdue -- the council last year budgeted $50,000 to pay an outside consultant for the analysis.

The utility and stormwater departments spend more than $85-million per year, more than one-sixth of the city's total yearly expenditures. Furthermore, some employees from public utilities complained last week at a City Council meeting of poor management in the department.

"Apparently some of the public utility employees felt that management was not treating them fairly, that they were being demeaned and looked down upon and harassed," council member Richard Kriseman said after the meeting. Council member Jay Lasita said those comments prompted him to support a public utilities audit over one of the department that runs the Bayfront Center theater and arena complex on the downtown waterfront. A council subcommittee had also suggested the Housing Department and Fleet Management departments as possible ones to review.

The council could take no formal action at Thursday's workshop meeting. But members agreed that the city administration should now draft some preliminary guidelines for the study that can be used to shop for a firm to conduct it.

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