Damakant Jayshi
City leaders this week balked at dismantling the Wausau Water works Commission but are exploring ways to increase oversight moving forward, after an hour-long discussion on Tuesday.
The five-member commission, chaired by the mayor, is an independent and nonpartisan utility commission that manages and operates the water and sewage operations of the city. The city attorney will now explore legal ways to bring human resources and compensation-related matters of the utility under the city’s HR Committee and the HR director, matters which have recently created conflict among staff.
Alder Lisa Rasmussen said that abolishing the commission was a sweeping solution in search of a problem and suggested that the council could add alders or city staff with expertise on HR and finance or even hold periodic joint meetings with the commission. She said the city does exercise some oversight through its budgeting process.
The issues surrounding the utility commission and the hiring and compensation for the utility’s staff have been the topics of discussion for some time now. On Jan. 23, the alders agreed to hold a joint meeting after a presentation on the commission’s structure and how the Wausau City Council could govern and regulate it.
Mayor Katie Rosenberg had shared a memo on the commission’s future at that January meeting. In the Jan. 19 memo, she outlined the policy question of whether to retain the utility commission in its current form where it exercises some autonomy over hiring and compensation of the utility staff, modify the commission, or abolish it and absorb those responsibilities into the City Council and its committees. One of the new committees, the mayor wrote, could be either a utility committee, or water utility and environment committee or utilities and public works committee.
City Attorney Anne Jacobson shot down questions and suggestions from some alders on whether HR matters could be brought under the council under the current state statute and ordinance.
“Once you create a utility commission, the manager of the commission answers to the utility commission,” she said.
Jacobson said the manger of the commission has the right to set compensation and wages separately for the utility’s employees. The city attorney also said that the utility commission has the legal right to do a separate wage study. Becky McElhaney, who chairs the HR Committee, and HR Director James Henderson have questioned that authority and said that has led to some opposition from employees of other city departments.
Jacobson said the utility commission could be modified, pointing out that the options laid out by the mayor were all legal and viable. She agreed the separate compensation study done by the commission has led to some resentment.
“It puts the city in a tough spot…Do we want to let the utility manage their own employees and set their own wages and we’ll budget for it, or are they going to budget for it? Or should we restyle the utility commission and maybe take back some of that authority and retool it? That’s what at stake here to discuss.”
Later during the discussion, she said that the council could publish a manual delineating the tasks and authority of the commission, clearly specifying what it can or cannot do.
Alder Doug Diny complained that they were not given adequate time to consider the future of the commission since the agenda was posted on Friday. But McElhaney, who chairs COW in her role as council president, pushed back, saying the matter has been under discussion for some time and pointed out that Diny was present at the Jan. 23 meeting when this very topic was discussed.
She said the matter of separate compensation has become a source of friction and needed to be addressed.
Alder Michael Martens was against adding a finance-related member to the commission but backed the idea of joint meeting between the Finance Committee and the commission.
However, Alder Tom Kilian said joint meetings haven’t produced the desired results, pointing to the discussion on Tuesday. Kilian said the utility runs on rate revenues and its needs are generally tied to rates and once again suggested dealing with the PILOT, or Payment in Lieu of Taxes. Every year, the City of Wausau collects roughly $1.6 million from Wausau Water Works as a property tax equivalent or PILOT. Some have called it “hidden taxes.”
Rasmussen backed the idea of reducing PILOT but said it should be done gradually.
Upon alders’ request, the city attorney said she would study the state statutes, the ordinances and case laws related to utilities and come back with some recommendations.
