Decatur City Commission Releases Statement Regarding Recent DeKalb Water Issues
Decatur Metro | July 29, 2015 | 11:32 am
The Decatur City Commission just released the following statement…
To our City of Decatur community:
We want to thank you for your patience and perseverance during the water issues of the past four days. As of Monday night we are no longer under a boil water advisory. While the city provides many essential services, including police and fire, DeKalb County Department of Watershed Management manages the water pipes and sewer system for everyone in the county, including the City of Decatur.
Though we could not fix the source of the problem, the city did try to minimize the impact on city residents and businesses. This included:
- Keeping the public updated with the limited information that we could get via TheDecaturMinute.com blog, theDecaturga.com website, Smart911 call and text alerts, @DowntownDecatur Twitter feed and the city’s Facebook page.
- Ending Saturday’s Slide the City event early.
- Establishing two cooling stations on Saturday at the Decatur Recreation Center and Ebster Gym.
- Bringing in a water filtration tanker to provide water to seniors and special needs residents who could not easily boil water. Firefighters distributed more than 500 gallons of drinkable water.
- Having the Fire Department refill the water in the air conditioning system at Clairmont Oaks so residents of this senior housing facility remained cool.
- Coordinating emergency services with DeKalb County Fire Services so that back-up equipment and water tankers were available.
Our community came together and supported one another by checking on neighbors and sharing water, letting those who did not have running water shower in your homes, supporting local businesses that remained open in compliance with the boil advisory and most important, remaining calm during a trying situation.
We hope a situation like this never happens again. However, emergencies can occur at any time. Here are steps you can take now to be better prepared in case of a future emergency:
- Sign up for Smart911 alerts. The city uses the Smart911 system for phone and text alerts. It is very easy to create a Smart911 profile at Smart911.com. If you already have a Smart911 profile please log in now and make sure you have checked the box to receive emergency alerts. If you need help setting up a Smart911 profile or would like city staff to meet with your neighborhood group or homeowners association, please contact the Decatur Fire Department at 404-373-5092 for assistance.
- Also sign-up for CodeRed alerts. While the City of Decatur uses Smart911 for alerts, DeKalb County uses the CodeRed system. Since you are a resident of both the city and the county, it is a good idea to sign up with both systems so you can be sure to never miss an alert.
- Keep extra bottled water and non-perishable food stored at your home at all times. There should be enough for several days for every member of your household, including pets. More information on how to build an emergency kit is available at Ready.gov.
The Decatur City Commission
Jim Baskett, Mayor
Kecia Cunningham, Mayor pro temporare
Fred Boykin, Commissioner
Scott Drake, Commissioner
Patti Garrett, Commissioner
“Ending Saturday’s Slide the City event early.”
Wait, what? This is something positive? You know what would have had a bigger impact? How about not starting the event at all when half the city and a large chunk of the county was still without water?!? LOL government speak.
+1000 (foot slide). Or whatever distance the thing actually ended up being. Saw uninstalled sections rolled up at Commerce and West Ponce.
Some Decatur residents already had low or even no water presure and the vendor and city still thought it was a good idea to open a hydrant? But maybe they weren’t using Smart911.
My screw-up was going to the Department of Watershed Web site when the water went out.
I will sign up for Smart911 and likely ignore the County system.
Not our fault.
Exactly!
Dear City,
Thanks for all of the great things you did to help seniors and early sliders!
What I would like to know is what you did behind the scenes? Did Mayor Baskett call Lee May? Did Commissioners put pressure on County officials? Did we establish a new plan for getting better information from the County? What did we learn from this situation?
I truly would like to know details beyond those listed in this statement.
Sincerely,
A Taxpayer (both City of and County)
yeah, it was a PITA, and i feel for seniors and those at less that full physical capacity who were inordinately challenged by the situation, but jeebus, people, let’s keep the damn thing in perspective.
yes stupid mistakes were made, there was a lot of process slop and generally poor form in county communications, but guess what, i see that in my business activities every day—especially when the unexpected, or crisis happens—even with smart, skilled, dedicated, and committed people involved. or maybe it’s just my corner of the world and your organizations run like well lubricated machines all the time.
not the world i live in.
can’t relate.
my biggest take away from this experience was mindfulness of how disconnected we’ve become from how the majority of the planet lives day to day, and the frickin sense of entitlement we’ve developed, such that having to drive to the store in our air conditioned cars to pick up a few gallons of clean water for a couple of days yields an existential crisis for us, while women and children on a daily basis for the entirety of their lives walk several miles a day to fetch water that is often not potable, yet that’s the only resource they have.
i recently spoke with a man in the Dominican Republic who reported his family was sick for 25 years: children with distended stomachs, everyone with intestinal distress . . . for 25 years until water filters were made available to them. that’s what’s fresh on my mind as we bellyache here.
[soap box dismount]
+1
Thank you, sir–well said.
What about I WAS TEMPORARILILY INCONVENIENCED! do you not understand?
I get that we’re incredibly fortunate to live where and when we do and that in the global scheme of things this was a very minor inconvenience. No one disputes that, and yes, we should all count our many blessings (the nearly continuous availability of abundant clean water being high on that list) and keep this in its proper perspective.
That said, this event was bungled by the county from the start and was much worse than it needed to be. While I’m pretty sympathetic to the people who were crawling around in the mud actually trying to fix the leak, the published email exchange between the interim Watershed director and the contractor points to a distressing lack of competence and accountability by county officials. Even more infuriating to me was the fact that the county CEO was nowhere to be seen or heard during the entire episode. When what is arguably the county government’s most critical core function breaks down, resulting in business closures and many citizens being without running water altogether, you’d expect the person in charge to be out in front of the cameras assuring us that all possible resources are being brought to bear. Instead, we got a few insipid press releases and snarky Twitter messages.
So while I’m happy to hear that the city did what it could do, what I really want to know is what the county is doing to prevent a recurrence or at least be more responsive the next time something like this happens. If that makes me spoiled or entitled, so be it.
Agree 100%. I don’t feel the need to apologize for being more fortunate than others in this world. We all get that we are lucky in that regard. That does not change the fact that we are paying people to do a job, and expect them to do that job well.
If this type of mismanagement happened in my company there would be personnel changes because our clients hold us accountable.
At a minimum the county employee who sent out that insulting condescending tweet should be toast. And there is no excuse for the many hours that went by without any updates.
Luckily I had no problems getting through the few days this occurred. It was not much of a PITA for me.
I do take issue with what seems like a fluffy statement issued well after. Is it useful information for those not signed up with the Smart911 system? Absolutely.
I’m not suggesting the City officials didn’t do anything, but it would be nice to know what they did do, what they would do different, etc. I don’t consider asking these questions of my local government bellyaching, nor entitlement.
The communication from the commissioners was informative:
– this is the situation as we perceived it
– these are the actions by the city
– our recommendations for the future preparation
If the issue at hand was simply entitlement and bellyaching, and not expression of a desire for competency, accountability, and preparation, what exactly is the purpose of the commissioners’ communication?
Smart, skilled, dedicated, and committed individuals are often held accountable for mistakes and competency is expected. Is Decatur not currently facing litigation for actions that resulted in damages (whether this is accurate or not is not currently known)?
Dekalb County or its contractors caused the break, lack of expertise exacerbated the situation, and the lack of a communication plan was evident. The downstream effects were considerable on a human and economic scale.
I agree with Rick that we are blessed and some folks make hell out of heaven while others make heaven out of hell – so to speak.
This communication was issued on a Wednesday – almost a week after the problems started and two days after it ended. While it is nice to read about what was done to help, some of this should have been communicated from the outset. And it was incredibly ill advised for slide the city to have even opened.
To recap: We are blessed to live in this country. We also realize that government is incompetent and inefficient. This is the case everywhere, not just DeKalb County. And you all want government run health care. Hilarious.
incompetence and inefficiency is not a county, state, or federal condition—it’s a human one and it plagues all systems. hell, there are times i’m amazed i even make it out of the house.
let’s leaven the criticism with a bit of understanding—there is no magic tribe of humans who performs at this utopian level of competence we always seem to be disappointed in not achieving.
YMMV
Sure, incompetence and inefficiency exist everywhere. The difference, however, is that there is no accountability in government.
by extension you’re saying humans aren’t accountable. my mother was a civil servant. my father served in the military for 30 years. they are their respective organizations had lots of accountability.
life ain’t a bumper sticker
Yes, because your parents worked in government, my argument has no weight. Well done. If you don’t understand the general concept that government is not held as accountable as the private sector, I can’t help you.
http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/management/agency/2015/02/24/federal-firing-2014/23880329/
There is some tiny measure of accountability in the federal workforce, but it’s so small that it’s almost not worth talking about. And the VA and OPM scandals are further proof that federal agencies can royally screw up, lie about it, and then have their employees face almost zero discipline.
no, my parents don’t prove my point—there are hundreds of thousands of people who work for the government who would laugh and/or be insulted by the notion that there exists no accountability in their work. it’s absurd on the face of it.
somewhere along the line, the convoluted belief that we can run government like a business took root among a certain population in our country and has spread like poison ivy.
the two enterprises are completely different animals: business exists to maximize profit, and government does not—it exists to profit the people, not from them. here’s a good summary of the distinctions:
http://www.powermag.com/25-differences-between-private-sector-and-government-managers/
ergo, one simply can’t apply a singular definition of accountability through a private sector lens to a public one.
another convoluted belief that defies logic and obvious evidence to the contrary is the notion that government can’t get anything done. or at least, done well. our highway system, our space program, our military, our public health and educational system . . .and at a local level our city government who led the renaissance of Decatur are all examples that point to governments’ ability to get things done. perfectly? no. room for improvement? hell yeah, what human endeavor doesn’t? but we the people get things done in both the private and public sectors.
I don’t simply mean individual accountability. I mean things like ambulance service. If govt. run, and it sucks, tough luck. If contracted out to a private company, and they suck, time to move on to a different company. Of course, I’m simplifying, but the general premise is valid.
Here’s another real world example: a few years ago the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) found a bunch of employees who were watching porn on their computers at work. A few of them were doing so very extensively. Number of these employees who were fired: zero.
http://www.businessinsider.com/some-of-the-sec-employees-watching-porn-were-making-over-200k-not-fired-2011-3
cherry picking.
for every government example you could cite, i could cite examples in the private sector: starting with nepotism that guarantees a job for life, all the way to the institutionalized incompetence of Comcast—yeah, let’s see how happy we’d be with that organization and their vaunted accountability running a government agency.
Comcast may suck, but that has nothing to do with he existence (or not) of accountability in government.
the implicit assertion in this conversation is private sector = accountability; public sector = no accountability
Certainly when a company has a near monopoly, the accountability reduces dramatically.
We will see Comcast get better with increasing competition. If not, the consumer will hold them ACCOUNTABLE.
Also, there are so many cherries on the tree to pick! Remember healthcare.gov? Even liberal wunderkid Ezra Klein was forced to ask, how does something get messed up so badly with no one getting fired?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/12/13/why-hasnt-anyone-been-fired-over-healthcare-gov/
Kathleen Sibelius, secretary of health and human services, resigned following the trouble with the website rollout. So while it’s semantically true that “no one was fired”, it is my impression that “we have accepted his/her resignation” is (not-so-subtle) code for “we have canned so-and-so” in both the public and private spheres – especially where big-wigs are concerned.
So when an organization (DeKalb County in this case) fails abjectly to perform its core duties, creating real hardship for a lot of people and businesses, and its senior leaders decline to step forward, take accountability and exercise leadership, we’re just supposed to say “Well gee, I guess sh*t happens, but that’s okay ’cause people have it much tougher in Haiti”? I don’t think so. The county’s performance last week was unacceptable; i.e., we should not just accept it. Otherwise we end up with the dysfunctional farce that our county government has become, and eventually we’re Haiti.
Manuel Maloof must be spinning in his urn.
ACA is working. Lives are being saved.
I was speaking to single-payer, but your statement would depend on what the goal of the law was. It certainly hasn’t reduced the cost of health insurance.
One of the goals was to slow the rising cost of health care. And to provide coverage to the millions who were uninsurable.
There is no evidence that it has slowed health care costs.
Other goals: to increase government dependence and “wealth re-distribution”.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/26/republicans-hurt-by-slowing-costs-in-health-care
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/11/06/obamas-claim-that-obamacare-has-reduced-health-care-inflation-every-single-year-since-it-was-passed/
The link you sent was about a specific claim the president made. It clearly says, “There is no dispute that health care spending is growing at its lowest level since the 1960s”
But is states that it doesn’t mean that the ACA was the reason. That was my point. I like how you post a link, then I post a link, and somehow i’m the only closed minded one. Haha. I am not ruling out that the ACA will decrease costs, I am merely stating that as of now we don’t have evidence of the causal relationship.
Just reading along here. So, you’re saying you don’t know, right?
There does not appear to be evidence (at this time) to support the claim that the ACA has lowered health care costs.
Pull your head out of your Odobenus rosmarus, and you just might find some!
It’s certainly easier to write that, than to show me otherwise, huh? The slowing in health care cost increases began prior to implementation of the ACA.
http://www.factcheck.org/2014/02/aca-impact-on-per-capita-cost-of-health-care/
Yes. And, much more fun.
I am one that certainly can’t argue with that!
Your mind is made up regardless of the facts. Goodbye.