If the city of Toledo’s goal in repairing the Collins Park Water Treatment Plant is to restore public trust, as city council was told this week, that goal just took a $188 million hit.
That’s the amount of the cost overrun on a $312 million project that will now cost water rate payers $500 million. And worse, Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson knew about the $188 million overage in January, but failed to inform city council. She also failed to tell city council, or the public, that she had an offer on the Southwyck property and let it expire.
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It just keeps getting worse for Ms. Hicks-Hudson, and it is mostly her own fault. She has been unable to set priorities and communicate openly with the public. And there is no reason she could not do both. Now she is open to the charge that, not only does she run a rudderless administration, but she is running a dishonest one.
The mayor in her February state-of-the-city address said that the city would make improvements to the water plant to better fight toxic algae in Lake Erie “with no increase in the water rates in place now through 2018.” What was that if not dishonest? This was a month after being told of the $188 million cost overrun.
When confronted by The Blade about the expired Southwyck deal, she feigned total ignorance. What is that if not dishonest?
On Tuesday, the mayor said she was no longer ruling out another water rate hike to cover the additional costs: “A rate increase would be the last thing I would want to do but if we are forced, we have to do what we have to do,” the mayor said.
Toledo’s water rates rose 13.2 percent each year from 2014 to 2016 and will go up by the same percentage in 2017. In 2018, they are to jump an additional 4.5 percent.
Here is the pattern in the administration: Drop the ball; backpedal; sweep mistakes under the rug. How well is that working for the mayor, so far?
Some city council members are upset, including Sandy Spang, an independent who ran against the mayor in November’s mayoral election. She says council needs to hire an independent consultant to keep a check on the Hicks-Hudson administration’s work at the city’s water-treatment plant. That’s the minimum reform that should happen.
The March 15 vote to increase the city’s temporary income tax from 0.75 percent to 1 percent was soundly rejected in large part because the electorate just doesn’t trust what it is hearing out of Government Center. If the tax increase is ever to pass, the mayor will need to change the administration. She will need to establish basic competency and transparency.
Bottom line, the mayor is hurting herself and letting down the minority and progressive communities who put so much hope in her and delivered such a remarkable victory to her. She desperately needs to clean house and bring in a professional management team. And then she needs to listen to them.
Time for a reboot, Madame Mayor. You just got a $188 million wake-up call. Your team is not getting the job done.
What we have in the Hicks-Hudson administration now is a combination of indecision, contradiction, fiscal and managerial incompetence, and cover-up. The mayor may have been kidding herself all along. She can no longer kid the public.
First Published May 27, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
