Sometime in the spring of 2009, the City of Archer requested that Clovis Watson Jr. serve as a consultant to the City of Archer to help address the city’s problems. Please allow me to share my analysis of the city developed during my tenure as its Interim City Manager from April 27, 2009 to July 24, 2009. I have shared this analysis with Clovis Watson Jr., who recommended me to the City of Archer as its Interim City Manager. I have also shared the analysis with the citizens and officials of Archer throughout the many governmental meetings that routinely took place during my time in office. I feel it appropriate therefore that I share my perspective with the public as well.
The City of Archer has approximately 1270 citizens and 570 water meters. Other than the usual property taxes and fees, the city essentially has no significant sources of income other than its water. But the city is pumping more water than it is being paid for. The city’s underground piping system is approaching 40 years of age. No replacement costs have been set aside to replace this system. Additionally the system is improperly looped. Many stubs and dead ends lower the water pressure and aging water meters impact the accuracy of readings. To address these issues, the city drilled a third well a few years back, but the water turned out to be unusable for public consumption and the water tank too low by at least 40 feet. The city sued the engineers responsible for the miscalculations and collected $250,000 in a settlement. To raise the tank, however, would cost more than the settlement. Meanwhile this new well remained contaminated by coli forms.
Not only does the city have problems with its drinking water but it also has problems with its waste water. The entire city is on septic tanks. It is no secret that economic development cannot take place without a waste water system. Over the past several years, the city has made numerous attempts to negotiate an agreement with GRU for a waste water treatment system to serve Archer. All of these negotiations have failed for one reason or another. A serious complication to the negotiations has been the fact that any deal that might be struck between Archer and GRU will need to be approved by the City Commission of Gainesville and the Alachua County Commission. GRU will also need to demonstrate that any waste water treatment plant in Archer will not raise fees to its customers in Gainesville.
To address the issue of Archer’s drinking water, I conducted considerable research into how best to use the city’s settlement money. When the CD expired at the bank where the settlement money had been invested, I reinvested the money where I could find the best rate. This mechanism turned out to be a super saver fund from which the city could write checks. Archer has about $1,276,000 in its general fund and about $350,000 cash reserves. Upon consultation with the city engineers, I decided that the city could get the well on line by installing a chlorine analyzer that would eliminate the contamination problem and make the system usable with the other two city wells at a cost of around $19,000, leaving over $230,000 of the settlement. Restoring the well to operation would also close the city’s CDBG grant, making the city grant eligible again. Until that grant was closed, the city could not seek new grants. I recommended hiring a grant writing agency, Jordan and Associates, in anticipation of the well coming on line.
Then I planned to use approximately $58,000 or less of the settlement money to replace every aging water meter in Archer with the state of the art touch read meters. Once the touch read meters were in place, the city could more accurately analyze the issue of unpaid water. The new well would be operational, although the well’s tank would never be elevated and would never contain water. The city commission accepted my recommendation for decontaminating the city’s water 5-0. They also approved hiring the grant agency. During my tenure, the commission did not, however, address the touch read meters.
As for the water treatment plant, I met with GRU twice, once with the Alachua City Manager and the Alachua public works director present, and once with Robert Walpole of the City of Archer’s engineering firm Causseaux, Hewitt, and Walpole present. After reviewing the results of these meetings, the city engineers and I decided it was in the best interest of Archer to look elsewhere for a solution to the city’s wastewater problem, for it appeared the same issues as before still complicated the feasibility of proceeding with GRU. Consequently, we approached CH2MHill for their suggestions.
CH2MHill produced a concept that would result in Archer owning its own wastewater treatment plant. CH2MHill would essentially provide the city with a turnkey product. CH2MHill would use its in house grant writers to find financing for the plant. This financing would be in the form of forgiving loans and non-matching grants. CH2MHill would then build the plant with the money it had found. Archer would own the plant, which would be located on the north side of town within the city limits. The plant could be up and running within two and a half to three years. The city commission would need to approve two task orders totaling $14,000 to start the project. Once again, this money would come from the settlement, which would still have over $150,000 in it after the two task orders. To know what the utility rates would need to be when the waste water treatment plant was completed, I asked Rural Water Management to do a free rate study for the city (the city is currently undercharging at least four dollars per meter). When I recommended to the city commissioners the issuance of the task orders and advised them that this plant would make Archer competitive for economic development in the very near future, the commission turned down the project 3-2 with one commissioner advocating that the city revisit its relationship with GRU.
Other persistent problems continue to nag the City of Archer, but none as fundamental to the viability of the city as the need for clean water and a wastewater treatment system. The city has no tourism identity to speak of and had budgeted $90,000 for a recreation program that only produced a marginal return on the investment. In fact, the general fund was subsidizing the recreation budget when my interim term expired. To alleviate subsidizing from the general fund, I suggested to the commission that the city investigate the public/private partnership model for recreation that so many municipalities are now using. In this model, the city puts up its asset, the land, and the private sector puts up the capital. The municipality incentivizes the private sector by allowing the private sector to profit from its investment. This is a win/win for the public and the private. Alachua County’s Jonesville Tennis Park is based on the public/private concept. To that end, I began the process of implementing a similar model for Archer.
During my tenure as Interim City Manager, I addressed some f40 projects for the City of Archer, some of which had been unfinished for quite some time because of the frequent turnover in city managers. One of the projects I completed is potentially profitable for the City of Archer. The City of Archer owns the cemetery. When I took office, Archer was selling its gravesites for $100 apiece. An advisory committee surveyed the cemetery and subsequently recommended that the city sell the sites for $1000 to $1500 apiece. The commission voted 5-0 to sell each grave for $1000. At $1000, the remaining grave sites in the cemetery will contribute as much as $700,000 to the general revenue fund. At $1500, the cemetery could contribute as much as $1,050,000.
During my tenure as Interim City Manager, I also fenced off a retention pond in Archer that had long been a safety hazard, began the annexation process of almost a thousand acres that would practically double the size of Archer and improve its tax base, had the Florida League of Cities evaluate the liability of every piece of property owned by the city, and began the study of a Special Events policy that would protect the city from any lawsuits that might arise from the public use of city property. Evaluations of employees and necessary staff changes were made including three terminations and one voluntary resignation. No previous evaluations of staff were on record over past several years. Consequently, I began the revision of job descriptions in order to operate the city efficiently and to prepare for the future growth and development of valued employees. The Codification of Ordinances and Resolutions had long been in disarray at City Hall, so I instructed staff to organize the records and have them ready to be sent to the City Attorney for final review by the beginning of August. Among the many other projects I addressed was the issue of a tourism identity for Archer. Plans were in the conceptual stages to make Archer the bicycling center of the county with rides through the countryside and across the state connecting to Cedar Key and the East Coast. With clean water, a waste water treatment plant, sound civil government, and an exciting reason to visit Archer, the goal was to coordinate all these elements to promote economic and cultural development in the City of Archer.
Problems do remain in Archer no doubt. One bleak scenario has Archer out of business as a city within three to five years. But I am optimistic that with vision and effective leadership, Archer may yet find a way to compete. There are many fine people in Archer, and the community has much to offer. In this report to Clovis Watson Jr., who was the consultant to the City of Archer during my tenure, I have outlined the essential factors that if resolved, Archer should begin to prosper.
