Thursday’s board meeting of Macon Water Authority abruptly ended mid-agenda after heated discussions over purchasing card policy, lack of live social media coverage and whether employees should be invited for regular board recognition.
The board’s verbal squabbles and allegations of lying followed alarming news in the engineering committee that millions of dollars in emergency repairs are needed for three facets of the Amerson Water Treatment Plant due to overlooked or ignored problems.
Two of the plant’s main filters are down as a result of unresolved issues uncovered a decade ago. A settling tank is out of commission after it was overrun with sludge that buried a broken rotating arm. At the intake from the Ocmulgee River, two traveling screens stopped working that provide protection between the river and the pumps and the third screen is compromised.
Vice President of Field and Plant Operations Michel Wanna warned if No. 3 went down, the authority’s EPD permit would be in jeopardy.
Wanna said they showed state inspectors everything the new plant manager recently discovered.
To make matters worse, most of the damage was preventable as engineers warned of structural issues at the filter buildings in 2015, and more recently staff should have flagged an abnormal amount of activated carbon, which looks like coffee grounds, winding up in the troughs in the lab, he said.
Cracks, holes, and calcium deposits dripping from ceilings indicate the longevity of the problem and that broken pipes at the facility should have been discovered and reported long ago.
Just last week, the authority announced the Amerson plant was recognized as one of Georgia’s best operated facilities amid all these issues.
“This is what I call an embarrassment,” Wanna told the board after showing photographs of all the damage. “I have heartburn seeing those pictures. It could have been repaired from the get go and not have cost us several million dollars.”
One building entrance is now closed due to the sinking exterior wall that no one reported to management.
Multi-million dollar savings from getting a good price on pipes from one of the recent bond projects will fund the repairs. There’s no time to go through the normal procurement process due to the need for swift action.
“We just can’t kick this can down the road,” Macon-Bibb board representative Bill Howell said.
“These are definitely priorities,” District 1’s Elaine Lucas said. “I personally support the efforts to correct it because I know it’s bad.”
“We need to do something about this now,” Macon-Bibb board representative Valerie Wynn said. “We’re not here to point fingers, but more than one person should have noticed.”
“You’d have to be blind not to see,” Wanna said.
Finance Committee Chairman Dwight Jones suggested it seemed almost like intentional sabotage.
“Since this was such malfeasance on the prior plant manager, I wonder if these could be an insurable event,” Jones asked MWA’s legal counsel Jay Strickland, who said he would check.
District 2’s Desmond Brown said MWA plant workers were not out there to do structural evaluations but work on producing the “best tasting water.”
“It’s not a fair statement to say it’s malfeasance. It’s wear and tear,” Brown said.
Hidden hazards, Facebook blackout
In an unrelated matter, the board also saw a photograph of a pickup truck that recently was damaged on Plum Street Lane after the pavement collapsed when an underground 54-inch brick culvert failed in multiple places.
“We have to add it to the projects we’re designing already,” Wanna said.
MWA Chairman Gary Bechtel said the downtown incident is another example of the decades of deferred maintenance the city left them with when MWA took over stormwater management a few years ago.
“To quote (Executive Director) Mr. Shipman when he addresses groups, ‘Our city’s 200 years old and we have a lot of infrastructure we have to replace that we inherited,’” Bechtel said.
A wooden pipe crews recovered at a job site now has a place of honor in the boardroom as a testament to the challenges the authority faces with projects costing in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Lucas encouraged them to let the people see all the authority has to do, and explain the high cost of doing business as prices are exponentially higher on things like fire hydrants and chemicals.
“Down the road we have some decisions to make” and people would be more understanding when the authority is asking for SPLOST dollars or rate increases, she said.
While Lucas was promoting more transparency about the authority’s challenges, she realized the board meeting was not being streamed on Facebook.
Bechtel said he made that decision himself and explained that the use of Facebook live began during COVID under the Governor’s emergency order and was no longer necessary.
As a protest of the decision, Lucas voted against all items on the engineering agenda.
Accusations fly, meeting ends abruptly
Had live cameras been on, social media viewers would have gotten an eyeful of tense exchanges near an abrupt end of the meeting that followed an update on the purchasing card policy. Allegations of violations and calls for an outside investigation came during the March meeting that Howell referred to as a “witch hunt.”
As the board revisited the issue this month, Shipman informed the board that no official “purchasing card policy” exists at the authority. He said there was only a broader policy for authority purchases that included instructions on filing with p-cards. There was nothing that he or Wanna had to sign, although some employees did sign something in 2019 but it was not consistently applied, he said.
Brown accused Shipman of backtracking from the prior meeting and insisted that the executive director had said he had signed a policy.
“No, sir,” Shipman said.
The Macon Newsroom reviewed the recording of the March meeting when Shipman and Wanna mentioned workers “signing off” on expense reports.
“A point of clarification, Mr. Brown,” Shipman said Thursday evening. “What we sign off on every month is our purchasing card statements. But we do not, and have not signed off on a document stating that we will follow a said purchasing card policy.”
Last month, Shipman explained that when he got to the authority, he found accountability issues with receipts and expense reports, so he implemented new stricter procedures requiring adequate documentation for all expenses.
That led to Brown accusing him of inappropriately altering the policy without the board’s approval. Shipman ultimately cut his purchasing card in two during that meeting.
Thursday, all but Brown voted to have Shipman work with legal counsel to draw up a formal p-card policy for the board to approve. Lucas requested a draft well in advance of the next meeting because she told Shipman “you work too slowly on stuff” and don’t give board members adequate time to review documents.
Prior to that vote, the meeting derailed into accusations and members scolding others for their behavior.
“These people, Mr. Brown, don’t intend to do right,” Lucas said in open session. “They plan to put this bogus thing in place and forgive all of the illegalities that are taking place in violation of the previous p-card policy. And so, you can lie for a while, but you get caught. You get caught. So I want us to at least have something in place, but you’re not fooling anybody and your lies will catch up with you.”
Bechtel asked, “Is there anybody in particular you’re disparaging, Ms. Lucas, or as a general statement that applies to a whole segment?”
“A hit dog will holler whoever it pertains to,” she said.
“So you’re not willing to own up as to who it is you’re disparaging?” Bechtel pressed.
Brown chimed in and said, “We can’t back nobody up when we just listened to a recanted statement by the executive director of this organization.”
“So, you’re accusing him and calling him a liar?” Bechtel asked Brown.
Lucas interjected, “You and the chair shouldn’t be engaging back and forth. Read your bylaws, Mr. Chairman.”
District 4’s Frank Patterson pointed out that any allegations about specific people should be made in executive session, which led Brown to thank him for adhering to bylaws.
Patterson uncharacteristically raised his voice and said, “I am sick and tired of all this attacking individuals without good reason. I’m just fed up with that. It’s time to get it cleared in a closed meeting.”
Wynn said she was “tired of this too” and urged members to maintain decorum.
Brown motioned for an executive session to finish the discussion.
“I will not sit here and be told I’m lying on someone,” he said.
Lucas seconded his motion, but the rest did not approve it.
“Motion to adjourn, Chairman Bechtel,” Brown quickly said.
“I will accept that motion,” Bechtel said, ending the meeting before completing the agenda.
“You better hope you’re close to Trump so he’ll pardon y’all,” Lucas said before confronting Bechtel about why he stopped broadcasting the meeting on Facebook.
“Why would you do that without asking us?” Lucas inquired before calling Bechtel a vulgar name. She referred to the other board members nearby as a “bunch of cowards.”
Before leaving the room, she lamented not having advanced notice of the change and vowed to have someone else livestream proceedings next month to keep the public informed.
Had the meeting been broadcast, people would have seen the serious issues affecting the treatment plant, she said.
“I have been trying to keep these folks, keep people at bay from really coming and jumping on these folks,” she told The Macon Newsroom. “And we have got to figure out a way to let people know what’s going on so they don’t overreact when they start jacking the bills up.”
About 15 members of the public attended the board meeting with four signing up to speak during to the authority. Most of the guests left before the discussions became heated.
During public comments at the start of the board meeting, Keep Macon-Bibb Beautiful’s director Asha Ellen reported water pressure issues in Unionville. She was not in her professional capacity, but passing on information on behalf of residents who could not get away from work, she said.
Wanna checked pressures on the computer during the break after committee meetings and found them to be more than adequate, but pledged to have someone check the meters for issues as soon as possible.
— Civic Journalism Senior Fellow Liz Fabian covers Macon-Bibb County government entities and can be reached at fabian_lj@mercer.edu or 478-301-2976.
