After reading the case study Welcome to the new town manager, by Mary Jane Kuffner Hirt, I established three major problems the community of Opportunity needed to correct. These problems involved the water & sewer system, the balancing budget, & the pay-as-you-go method. The city manager, Jennifer Holbrook, must implement strategies that would correct these problems quickly. If I were Holbrook my initial goal would be to correct the water and sanitary sewer systems problem. I believe it is the community responsibility to pay for the up-keep and maintenance of the two facilities, because it is the community who is reaping the benefits of these facilities. I would recommend the council to combine the sewer (330,800) and water (158,090) expenditures to the sewer (113,000) and water (379,350) capital program expenditures, and incorporate the two as one revenue fee. This would allow the revenue fees to pay for the operating cost and the reconstruction cost of the two facilities. Making them one fee would give the council more leeway in increasing total revenue cost for these services. In general, people tend to see one bill instead of two as a deal instead of a problem. This is almost like the buy one get one free philosophy; you know the store has raise the price of the item you are purchasing so that you are paying for the item youre getting free. The propose revenue fee would total 648,170. The 700 water customers and the 3000 sewer customers would pay for this fee. Assuming that the 700 water customers were already included in the 3000 sewer customers, the total customer for the two services would equal 2300. I would divide the total revenue fee (648,170) by the total customers (2300), resulting in each customer paying 23.48 per month for the two services. I feel this proposed revenue fee would make utilities more self-sufficient.My second goal would be to correct the budget balancing problems. The budget debt each year...
