CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – If there is one job Mayor Katie Rosenberg would love to give up, it’s chairperson of the Wausau Water Works Commission.
The chair determines what’s on the agenda, and, while the chair’s initiatives can always be voted down by the rest of the board, they control the debate. With Katie Rosenberg as chair, Wausau has among the most expensive water in the state. She steered the board towards filtering forever chemicals down to zero, which is substantially more expensive than filtering to within state PFAS requirements. She was chair when the city failed to account for all the training and staffing needed to operate the new filtration plant. How those costs will be covered next year are still to be determined.
On Tuesday night, the City Council considered whether the Water Works Commission should be replaced by a city council committee. A committee made up of elected officials would be accountable to voters. If you’re unhappy about the cost of water, you can vote your council member out of office.
There are some problems with the change to a committee. First, finding city council members willing to hold the line on spending and taxes has been next to impossible. The water works would be run by the same crowd that got an extra $1.1-million in state aid, and still raised property taxes in the last budget cycle.
The change that Mayor Katie would like to see is that she gets to drop a hot potato. The mayor only votes to break ties on the City Council or to issue a veto. Publicly she can say “blame the city council if you think your water bill is too high.” But the thought bubble above her head will say “thank goodness that’s off my plate.”
Chris Conley
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