Issues and Actions: Water

I have been on this Council less than a year, and taken the time to evaluate and learn.  Every issue and challenge needs to go through a critical thinking process.  Evaluate, Assess, Develop Action Plan, Execute and Review.  Through forty years of leadership, management and higher education I have learned that effective solutions are a result of these steps.

Water

Water has long been an issue in Kings Mountain.  And as we evaluate and assess the problems, so many of the them can be traced back to poor management and leadership.  Literally, the issues would not have been this bad with effective leadership and qualified competent management in City Hall. 

The plant was renovated around 2016, and was modified internally in 2018.  And during the rest of the time there was little or no maintenance done.  You cannot operate a plant like this without regular, budgeted maintenance.  So now instead of annual preventative maintenance expense, we are looking at larger capital expenditures to fix some of the self inflicted problems.

The new City Manager addressed one of the biggest issues, and has hired a qualified and experienced water director from outside the area.  His knowledge of best practices and vast experience will help us solve this problem today, and keep it solved going forward.  Staffing has been increased, and we are assessing weaknesses and problems to keep working towards permanent solutions.  We still do not know what it will cost to fix the problems at the water plant, but we do know it has to be done.  It is not in the budget, but we will use some of the cash reserves we have built up this year to pay for this.

The larger issue that we learned about was the lack of a back up plan or option for water for our community in case there was a breakdown at the plant or an issue with the lake. bottom line, we had no back up plan.  None.  No cross connects with other towns or water systems.  No nothing.  A basic tenet of leadership is have a back up plan for everything.  Yet we had none.  To solve this we are currently negotiating cross connection agreements with two other nearby public water systems.  This will cost us, but it has to be done.  There is no option.  We let the water plant fall into disrepair, neglected basic maintenance, yet we had no back plan.  This is why we need cash reserves, and unfortunately will need them more often than not in the next few years as we address management and leadership shortcomings.  

So yes, I believe that the water issue in Kings Mountain was totally preventable, and was the result of poor management and leadership.  We will try to have this corrected by next summer, but it is a big challenge to fix quickly.  We need to fix it one time, fix it right, and then adopt a plan for preventive and continued maintenance.