BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
Telegraph Editor
STARKE — Controversial decisions about the city’s budget have flared tempers, but the goal for City Manager Drew Mullins has been to support commissioners in focusing on their business model.
While less money is proposed for both the police and fire departments next year, this doesn’t result in a savings to the city because the money is being directed to Starke’s neglected utility infrastructure.
It isn’t just a recent phenomenon. Mullins said it’s a pattern that developed over 20 to 30 years, using revenue from utilities to fund general government services, including public safety. With revenue transfers that sometimes surpassed $1 million, that money was being spent on primarily personnel costs in those departments, which means it couldn’t be invested in the ongoing operations of the city’s business, which includes providing electricity, gas, water and sewer to its customers.
Except when emergencies arose or the city was able to tap grants and loans, these systems were not maintained, not expanded, not improved. Some notable exceptions would be a voltage conversion for the electric system as well as work at the substation, and a project to smoke test and map the wastewater collection system.
The latter revealed how badly repairs were needed.
“In essence, the utilities have been cut over 20 years,” Mullins said. In doing that, you set yourself up for the future where we’re in the position now where our lines are falling in, roads are collapsing, lift stations are undersized. The wastewater treatment plant needed to be upgraded. Consent orders. I mean, these things just keep building up and building up.”
“Now is the time we need to actually take this on,” he said.
He gave the closure of Washington Street as an example, saying it is in horrible shape. You can see where wastewater collection lines have collapsed.
The ongoing repairs are part of the first phase of collection line upgrades across the city. Originally, the first phase was awarded $5.36 million in combined grant and loan funds from the State Revolving Fund. The low bid was $6.9 million prompting the city to request additional funding.
It will take multiple phases and many years to complete, but until it does, the city’s plant will continue to be inundated with stormwater, causing backups, including sewage spills in people’s homes and their streets. A consent order from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection required the city to solve the problem or face fines.
Moving a lift station away from the flood-prone banks of Alligator Creek will help alleviate stress on the system, Mullins said. A flooded lift station can contribute to backups into homes just as the broken lines in the city do.
“We’re literally treating rainwater at the treatment plant. It just adds so much to the system,” Mullins said. Some pumps in the city’s lift stations are undersized. They were built for the time period and never upgraded.
The lift station at the creek is being moved closer to town on an estate-owned parcel that the city is taking via eminent domain. The judge issued the order for the taking in the past couple of weeks, he said. The cost of the land was around $8,000 with $16,000 allocated for legal costs, according to the city attorney.
Moving the lift station approximately 400 feet will cost $1.6 million. The low bid on upgrading the wastewater treatment plant was $23.36 million on top of the millions already spent on engineering and design. It is being paid for with a combination of grant and loan funding through USDA.
In addition to serving existing customers better, Mullins said the city must prepare for the future by supporting growth and development, including opportunities the city has lost out on.
“We’ve got Jacksonville and Gainesville both growing this way towards us, and we’ve not been in a position to ever take advantage of it,” he said.
There are plans to extend water and sewer lines to the bypass on State Road 16. Bradford County and the legislature have committed a combined $6 million for the project.
In addition, engineers at Woodward and Curan developed a Water Facilities Plan that will cost $14.3 million, and Starke will be looking to the State Revolving Fund once again for grant and loan funds to carry it out. The plan includes a partial replacement of the water treatment plant. A new water tank and mains on Market Road are needed to provide adequate water supply and pressure. Starke will also move to an electronically monitored metering system that will more efficiently and accurately measure water usage.
The needs of the water and wastewater systems are more often discussed than the electric infrastructure. From poles to transformers, the cost of replacement has skyrocketed. According to Mullins, a transformer large enough to serve one of the shopping centers has gone from around $50,000 to more than $100,000 over the past couple of years. And yet, the city needs to have them sitting on the shelf and ready to go so power can be restored in hours instead of days.
Rather than a repair-as-we-go strategy, Starke needs to be more prepared for the unforeseen even as it takes charge of its future, according to Mullins. That includes investing its own money to leverage against other sources, so it could potentially turn $1 million into $4 million.
“In order to do that, we do have to have some skin in the game,” he said.
