In an emergency meeting, Sanford commissioners this week agreed to spend at least $1 million to quickly repair the city’s aging wastewater system after last year’s Hurricane Ian, Tropical Storm Nicole and other recent storms overwhelmed the decades-old infrastructure and caused sewage to flow in downtown streets and back into homes.
Such a large expenditure would typically require city staff and commissioners to spend weeks developing a repair plan and putting out a request for companies to bid on the project.
“But we don’t have time to wait,” said Bill Marcous, a manager in Sanford’s utilities department, at Monday’s commission meeting. “Over the last two years, the storm activity has accelerated the useful lifespan of this system beyond regular maintenance. … We need to place orders for this system now.”
At the meeting, Commissioner Sheena Britton said commissioners should also address the low morale among Sanford employees and that the “city is falling apart.”
“The city of Sanford is a sinking ship,” she said. “And I need to talk about that with my fellow commissioners and mayor today.”
But city attorneys and commissioners stopped her and said the emergency meeting’s agenda was publicized to address the repair expenditure for Sanford’s wastewater system. Under Florida’s Government-in-the-Sunshine law, commissioners could not talk about issues not on the agenda.
Commissioners, however, agreed to address Britton’s concerns at a public workshop on Feb. 13.
City staff said the growing popularity of Sanford’s downtown district, including dozens of new restaurants and breweries opening in recent years, has overwhelmed the wastewater infrastructure, an outdated vacuum system built in the 1960s. The rest of the city is serviced by a modern gravity system to pump out and force sewage into treatment stations.
Also, heavy rains during Labor Day 2021, Ian last October and Nicole last November caused backups to the older wastewater system, along with collapsing some stormwater pipes, in the downtown area.
The wastewater vacuum system that needs the emergency repairs services nearly 500 residential and business customers in an area bordered by Second and 25th streets, and Sanford and French avenues.
Florida law and city policy allow Sanford employees during an emergency to contract with a private company and make large expenditures without putting out a request for competing bids from contractors, city attorneys said.
In the coming months, city leaders will work on a broader plan to replace the wastewater system.
“This is why we’re doing this, to get these parts in here as quickly as possible” and make the repairs, Mayor Art Woodruff said in explaining why the city called the emergency meeting.
Downtown resident Maria Shreve said she supports the repairs. But she would like to see a more detailed plan and more transparency from the city.
“How is this going to happen?” she said. “Who are they ordering from? Who is going to do the work? Me, as a taxpayer, I need to know this. We’re three months after the problem was created. Why hasn’t there been a plan?”
Britton said Sanford officials also need to address the city’s aging stormwater infrastructure too, especially in the historic Black neighborhood of Georgetown.
“Georgetown has issues with streets being flooded,” Britton said. “Where are we on the stormwater repairs? I haven’t had an update, and we’re in a hurricane state. What’s going on?”
Britton said she is also concerned about the high rate of turnover among city employees.
“When our employees’ morale is low, when pay is low, when employees are overworked. Then we start losing people that have been here a long time,” she said. “We start losing a lot of our institutional knowledge.”
Woodruff called Britton’s concerns “a little over-dramatic.”
Commissioner Patty Mahany said she was surprised by Britton’s comments.
“Right now, you’re the only commissioner that is expressing these issues,” Mahany said at the meeting.
City Manager Norton Bonaparte did not attend the meeting because of a family emergency. He could not be reached for comment on Friday.
mcomas@orlandosentinel.com
