Honorable Mayor and City Commissioners:

I am writing to express my extreme concerns about the charter proposal that apparently is designed to eliminate the position of General Manager for Utilities as an independent Charter officer.  I believe that I may have a unique perspective on this proposal because I am likely the only person who has spent extensive time serving as both the City Manager (15 months) and the General Manager for Utilities (about two years) here in Gainesville.  My entire 33 year career in local government, twenty of which was in Gainesville, was about equally divided between general government and utility specific experience.  When I began my career in Gainesville in 1989, the General Manager was under the City Manager, so I am familiar with how that operated.  

There are many reasons which I will outline below, but they all boil down to this.   The City Commission needs to hear the voice of both the City Manager (CM) and General Manager (GM) as equals.  There is a dynamic tension between the roles of the CM and GM and as our elected representatives YOU need to be the ones to sort out and balance those priorities.  This is simply too important to our community to be delegated to an unelected City Manager.  My more specific rationale follows.  

When the GM reported to the City Manager, information that the City Commission needed to hear about necessary maintenance was suppressed.  At the utility, anything less than 100% reliability is considered to be a failure and something which needs improvement.  While a missed garbage pick-up or the appearance of a pothole is unfortunate, it does not compare to our customers’ expectations that they will always obtain pure, clean water when they turn on the faucet or that their toilets will always flush.  And yet, when the utility reported to the City Manager, the CM exerted strong internal pressure to treat all of these issues similarly in the name of “fairness.”  The City Commission needs to fully understand the trade-offs between rates and reliability and make the appropriate decisions. 

The planning horizon of the General Government and the Utility tends to be significantly different.  Due to the capital intensive nature of utility operations, almost everything that the utility thinks about today takes three or five or ten or more years to come to fruition.  While that is true of some aspects of the general government, the City Manager tends to be focused more on the budget cycle.  From my viewpoint as a former staff person, there is a basic issue in that many elected officials are understandably focused mainly on what they can accomplish during their term in office, and effective City Managers help them achieve their goals.  But one term in office is very short in the utility’s planning horizon.  Again, the City Commission needs to hear the long term voice and make the appropriate decisions.  

Few, if any City Managers have extensive background in utility operations.  It is rare to find someone coming out of the utility sector who has experience in operations as complex as GRU.   I would venture to say they are nearly nonexistent from the general government side.   Think  back to your own learning curve as an elected official even from a policy perspective on utility issues.  Then multiply that many fold in terms of managing the day to day operations.  Most City Managers simply do not have the background to do this, and upon arrival will not have the time to develop the necessary expertise to make sound recommendations to the City Commission. 

I have tremendous respect for both the general government and utility operations in our City government.  And I recognize that “sibling rivalry” that sometimes seems to exist can be uncomfortable for you as elected officials.  Nonetheless, I think that balancing these competing needs is one of the most important things that you do as elected officials.  I would therefore urge you to reject any attempts to remove the General Manager for Utilities as an independent charter officer.   

Sincerely,

Karen Johnson