Letter to the Editor: Fall River can avoid charging residents even more for water and sewer

I have been following the Fall River City Council’s debate on the increase proposed in water and sewer charges in the 2021 budget. I reached out to the Fall River mayor’s office after he was inaugurated in January with some suggestions that Fall River should take a look at the pursue ways to offset some of the charges that are now coming to a point of critical action.

Listening to feedback from city councilors on coordinating a best approach, I think the administration needs to look at what Steven Covey would advise: "First things first.”

The job of the mayor should be to exercise executive leadership. The aspect of monitoring the ongoing statistics of COVID-19 infections and even deaths is really statistical calculation. It really shouldn’t be a focus of the mayor spending any time on it. And while its is nice that he is doing an outreach on Black Lives Matter and modest protests, that is largely ceremonial and doesn’t go to the long-term issues effecting Fall River.

There are programs available at the state level that can upgrade and offset charges that are ongoing for water and sewer plants that can have a salutary benefit for years to come to offset costs. Massachusetts started a pilot program in 2007 that 10 cities and towns have used to their benefit to upgrade and create efficiencies in water and sewer plants. Mass. DOER has been way out in front of any other state, including California, in energy efficiency and addressing energy and efficiency. New Bedford has implemented many programs for its residents that are literally saving taxpayers millions of dollars over what will be decades. They are in fact a model city on the eastern seaboard in getting programs like this done. Credit to Mayor Jon Mitchell.

Fall River doesn’t even have to look to New Bedford to see what well designed energy programs can accomplish. Look at what the former president of Bristol Community College has done on the Fall River campus. It's a model that colleges on the east coast now follow to bake in years of savings which offset millions of dollars in costs. I’m not suggesting reinventing the energy efficient wheel but merely a “follow the pathbreakers and leader” approach to benefit Fall River residents. They have shown that planning works. New Bedford in fact in the past has employed not one, but two “energy managers” to help effect some of these programs, which include a $14 million upgrade to the New Bedford Housing Authority for water and energy upgrades to public housing in the city. In the last few years, New Bedford has solarized many public housing units at one of the oldest public housing projects in the US. It works.

I credit many of the city councilors with “getting it”. They see the immediate problems and also long-term issues, and as Councilor Shawn Cadime has rightly indicated, money Fall River will receive from the CARES Act is a one-time deal, not an ongoing budget offset. With the water and sewer department facing a near $1 million shortfall, it’s time to refocus to follow the alarm bells that the City Council is so loudly ringing.

I understand and sympathize that the present mayor’s past experience may not have included dealing with the aspects of what he is now faced with, but crises aren’t particularly caring or sympathetic to what you bring into the job from a past life. Maybe Coogan needs to hire someone who can fill in details and skills that he is not adept at. Fall River needs a plan and direction, and this is no longer something that can be ignored or delayed.

Ed Hodkinson

Fall River