Water Manager Ted Henefin tried to say the new water meters are improperly installed but the contractor was having none of it as he fired right back at Jackson's water savior. WLBT reported:
In December, Interim Third-Party Manager Ted Henifin ordered Sustainability Partners to stop work on a project designed to install some 50,000 residential meters across the city, saying that many of the meter boxes are not flush with the ground.
“They stick up way too high in most people’s yards,” he said. “So, my point was they need to get them back to where they should be, which is flush.”
Officials with Sustainability Partners contend the devices were installed correctly based on the level of the city’s existing water service lines, and that all of the meters now in use were signed off on by the city.
“That’s part of the contract,” said SP Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel Adam Cain. “They’re using the meters as part of the sign-off,”
Under terms of its contract with the city, SP would put up the initial cost to replace the meters. Once the meters are in use, the city pays a monthly fee for each device. The agreement states that before any device can be activated, Jackson must give SP a “certificate of acceptance.”
Meanwhile, Cain says the meter boxes are not flush, in large part, due to the placement of Jackson’s water service lines. To lower the boxes, the service lines would have to be lowered, something that would cost Jackson more money and more work.
Jackson entered into a “master utility service agreement” with Sustainability Partners in November 2020 to help the city procure and replace the commercial meters installed as part of the Siemens contract.
The following May, the agreement was expanded to allow SP to replace water meters for the entire city system. SP brought on a subcontractor to install the devices.
To date, about 30,000 residential meters have been replaced......
He says lowering the boxes would likely require lowering the service lines connected to the meters, something that could be an expensive undertaking. He also says that lowering the lines was not in the original scope or plan for the project.
“You’re talking about heavy equipment, digging up everyone’s yards,” Cain said. “That’s much more than replacing the meters and boxes that are falling apart.”
Cain says SP consulted with the city early on about the need to lower the service lines, but the city opted against it.... Rest of article.
Sooooo....... City contracts with contractor to replace the Siemens meters. Contractor installs meters according to specs. New Athletic Director comes in and decides he doesn't want to keep the football coach hired by his predecessor. This is going to end well.
Of course, the contract probably has a termination clause that involves a nice-sized payment. The Water Manager is probably trying to break the contract without paying any termination fees. Stay tuned.
74 comments:
The water manager is not doing much to help his reputation, but he sure knows how to get egg on his face.
Couldn't they just have used a box of a different design? When they replaced my meter they took out metal boxes that were flush with the ground and replaced them with plastic ones that stick up more.
Jackson literally needs to hit a reset button. Move everyone out and slowly start over. Every generation has made crucial mistakes that have compounded over time. This is like hiring an interior decorator for the Titanic as the water rises to the deck level.
There is no practical way to "lower the pipes" to have the meter flush with the ground. If the contractor did do so, then he would have to modify the customer's piping as well. There is no functional reason to have the meter box flush with the ground. It is strictly for aesthetics. On the other hand, with the City's usual problem of not being able to find water meters when needed, having the meter box elevated 1-2" above ground may be a blessing.
all those millions just aren't going to be enough...
more and more and more hands in the pot..
The meters on my properties are about the same size as the ones they replaced. There are no problems with them sticking up.
Typical Jackistan cluster. Very radical. Right?
IF the contractor has documentation that shows that they raised a concern about this before installation began and the city at that time showed no interest in taking on the extra fees to level the water lines then the new guy is borked.
The new meters are not any taller than the old meters. The box is made out of plastic. The bottom of the box can be trimmed down to any height.
If there is a problem causing the meter box having to be a certain height it is simple to put replacement meters in like to old meters that were removed in the first place. Why does the city and their new hired professional want to continue to waste money doing, redoing, and redoing again the same job that was not really needed in the first place. There was no problem with the original meters. The problem was with the meter readers. It is much cheaper to replace meter readers than replace all of the meters.
Calling this a clown show is an insult to clown shows.
F*ck you Carpetbagger Ted.
So, I have to admit that I've not seen the purported meter box elevation infractions, but: If the boxes are like the ones I have in my yard, they are constructed in such a way as to compensate for the depth of the water service and, thus, the meter (I think my boxes have a slot on each end) Therefore, unless the meters themselves are installed above ground level, why couldn't [someone] simply modify or reset the boxes, rather than incurring the cost of lowering the water services / meters?
Larry, Moe and Ted.
Maybe the new water boxes are too high. Check the old with the new (put them besides each other) The boxes are not high do to negligence, they just align with the existing pipes.
If you need assistance just call me 1-800- common sense
No sense in getting the attorneys involved
Ted's billing 'solution' desperately needs a problem.
Henifin sure as hell has Emmerich hooked in the gill.
I smell a red herring.
These exposed boxes will be destroyed by gunfire, wehicles, kids and thieves.
Why is JXN Water not a nonprofit?
This Ted character is good, I see what he’s doing. But my water meter is the same height as the old one.
I lost all hope with Henifin when I saw how friendly he is with Lumumba. It was too good to be true.
Who was the subcontractor Sustainability Partners used?
This is semantics. The meter boxes have 100% nothing to do with the accuracy of the meters. Nothing. It is a box that doesn't have a bottom that is placed around and on top of(think upside down box) that prevents damage to the meters from cars or lawnmowers driving on top of them, people tripping into the hole, or dirt and sediment from covering the meter. Anyone can buy and replace a water meter box at a hardware store. You can't get a water meter. This guy is a MORON!
If they would have just hired MAC & Associates, Marcus Wallace could have had this fixed in no time. I bet Henfin hires him in some capacity for his knowledge and his certifications on his wall.
Someone needs to build a biofuel plant near Jackson. The conversion of all the bullshit coming out of this place could power the world.
They are paying this guy $400,000 and he doesn't have a working knowledge of how a meter box has zero correlation to the performance of a meter? A water meter literally has a line in and line out on it with the meter counting the flow. The meter box does nothing.
OR, notch the box to fit.
OR, landscape a little dirt sloping up around the box to blend it in.
What, he didn't finish 3rd grade?
Billing water based on value of the house will cause most upper end neighborhoods to move. I will not pay $15,000 for water. Period.
No, the boxes stick up above grade like they do because the contractors were too lazy to cut the plastic sidewalls to fit around the existing waterlines. I told the fellas that installed mine that under no uncertain terms with my boxes big sticking up, and I made them a pot of coffee and they took the 45 seconds to cut the plastic so the box walls would fit around the waterlines. Wow there are more than many examples of the contractor being too lazy to do this on every other piece of property, it’s just another example of this city, and this mayor, and its leader ship, accepting substandard work
Kingfish please ask this simple question to the socialist Ted…. Out of the 32,000 meters installed what is the read rate? That will show you the system is reading correctly. Ted is creating this chaos so he can force rich people to supplement the poor people (billing based on home value instead of consumption).
Bolshevik Billing is a tax, not a bill for service.
NE Jxn has to secede now, no more commie crap.
Sort of like buying a new door for your house. If it is a little too long you do not lower the entire house to fit the door.
I guess if you believe that the freeze froze all of those water lines and caused the problems you will be inclined to believe the meter box is too tall so you should lower the water lines
Silly Rabbit. Don't lower the pipes. Raise the ground!
My new meter is exactly where the old one was, at grade and no problem for my mower.
Henifin, which sounds like a hybrid chicken-fish, needs to find another excuse for polluting Jxn with the democrat sewer of marxism.
From the WLBT article:
Cain says SP consulted with the city early on about the need to lower the service lines, but the city opted against it. “The city concluded that wasn’t a good use of taxpayer dollars to spend that kind of money just to make meter boxes lower, especially since lowering the meter boxes doesn’t do anything to improve performance,” he said.
That should be verifiable. If true, then . . .
I feel so much better knowing “that all of the meters now in use were signed off on by the city.”
The contractor did not do some installs correctly due to laziness.
The meters themselves have nothing to do with the issue. The contractor is also replacing the meter box and is not installing the meter box correctly because they are not taking the time to do it.
I watched them on my street with their little assembly line procedure. I then had to go back and trim the bottom of the box so that my box was not sticking up out of the ground. I didn't want something else to weed eat around, much less be an eyesore sticking up out of the ground in the middle of my yard.
My meter box was sticking up above ground, but it was simply because Biden was using it to store classified documents.
If the installer is required to keep the meter box flush with the ground then that’s not a very difficult repair. You don’t need to rework any plumbing as others have stated. You take a drill and drill out a pattern to make the slots longer and use a reciprocating saw to cut the plug out of the box. Very simple and they can use portable battery operated tools and use an inverter that works off power system to keep the rechargeable batteries powered up. I keep all of that in my truck at all times. It’s very very simple to work out.
Who's on first? Jackson hasn't a clue about the bases 😂😂
One of Ted Henifin's jobs while fixing Jackson's water is to save the tax payers as much money as possible, so of course he's going to say the contractor screwed up and needs to pay for it. But the bottom line is that the city's water lines are not buried deep enough, the city owns the lines, and the city needs to get out there and bury the lines deeper.
12:41 - reading is important, especially when one wants to make anything near an intellectual comment.
NO - the box is not the problem. The design of the box is not an issue.
GO back and try 'reading' again. The waterline (that pipe that comes into your property from the street and supplies water to your house - through the meter) is not deep enough for the style meter that the city purchased.
Accordingly, the waterline that leaves the meter and continues to your house is not deep enough for the style meter being used.
IF they were to lower the waterline, then the meter would be lower, and then the box could be lower. But, to lower the waterlines throughout the city would be a damned expensive process, and something that would destroy people's yards because the line from your meter to your house would have to be dug up and reinstalled a few inches deeper.
This is all much ado about nothing, but part of Henifin's grand plan to claim that the billing system doesn't work, the meters don't work, etc etc so the only solution is his equity infrastructure program - charging based on what he thinks people can pay and not charging to those that he either (1) doesn't think CAN pay, or (2) doesn't think ought to HAVE TO pay.
Hiring a cell phone company recruiter and call center guy to run the billing department is not an improvement over what has been the traditional City of Jackson process. The city has used the billing office as a dumping ground for employees that can't do their job elsewhere but "can't" be fired for 'political' reasons.
The billing system is much more complicated today than it was a few decades ago and involves a hell of a lot more than answering the phone and not giving answers. Hell, even if they did give answers, that is a small part of what the job should entail.
Once Henifin finds fault with the new meter contract so he can cancel the work midstream (think - what Stokes pushed the city to do with Siemens in the middle of their contract, leading to its crash) and claim that the ONLY WAY the city can run their system is to quit charging based on useage. Granted, every other city in the country has the capacity to do this, for some reason in his mind it just won't work in the Radical City with Soul. Of course the real reason is that to be a Radical City with Soul, we need to do radical things and take care of the soul brothers.
It sounds to me, Ted is trying to keep Jackson beautiful.
Give SP a sawzaw and install the boxes correctly.
There is an issue with access to the meters. The boxes should be installed level with the ground to prevent dirt to collapsing around the meter. It could potentially damage the meter. It makes reading them impossible without digging it up, again, which would cause damage.
Sounds to me like SP is cutting corners to save a buck and extend the payout on damaged meters.
Ted is just being practical and rational when it comes to the work they did.
I'm leaning towards agreeing with 2:53's comment that Henifin is purposefully creating this "issue" with the meter boxes and delaying their installation, so he can justify billing based on home value and not actual consumption as measured by the meter boxes.
Does it really make sense to think the Jackson water debacle will float this blog forever? I mean, really. These subject threads have been going on for two years with daily updates and never-ending soties of leaks, dunces and floating turds.
PULEEEZE, is there nothing else of value in the metro area to replace or at least temporarily substitute for the water madness?
I enjoy the blog immensely, but it hurts my teeth for this to be the daily subject. And the same clowns post the anti-Chokwe bullshit every day, following Kingfish's lead.
So what’s the read rate??
January 12, 2023 at 5:04 PM, you have no idea what you're posting about.
The city side of the water pipe is too high. If the city were to go to all the trouble, and expense, of lowering their side of the pipe, before the meter, the other side of the meter is the property owner's responsibility. I wonder what the property owners would say?
This is what happens when a sewage person is put in charge of water.
It’s my understanding they would have been done with install by October…. Does anyone really believe this has anything to do with boxes being a inch high or inch lower. Is true that the company proposed to do billing but Mayor didn’t want to fire the people in billing.
Sustainability Partners is out of Chandler, AZ and is using Registered Agents out of Ridgeland as their registered agent for the Secretary of State filings…this is fishy as hell
I had high hopes for Henifin. I envisioned a doer. I envisioned a man who could work, accomplish, and get stuff done. I envisioned common sense. Now I fear he’s just a bureaucrat, and a talker. I fear he’s one of those who acts like they are leading and working when in reality they are just standing around hoping to take credit for someone else’s accomplishments. I hope I end up proven wrong, but I’m not at all impressed with him at this point. Unfortunately, many who are working closely with him are unimpressed as well at this point.
Solution— round up the JJ responders that (genuinely) are able to re-set the meter boxes, have them go around and correct the bad boxes; and pay them a reasonable amount to do so. $5,000 - $10,000 ought to cover it, I’m sure SP would pay the bills.
You don’t need meters if you’re going to charge for water based on property value. Pull them up. Rich folks in Fondren can pay for everyone else’s water!
So what’s the cap Heflin on residents and business? So residents may have to subsidize a business?
Hitting like button 7:42. He is full of sh*t. Came here to oversee the water plant and service functions and morphs into a Lumumba apologist minion.
Ours was installed about 5 inches above the ground. Many in our neighborhood are higher. I dug up mine, used a hack saw to deepen the slot for the pipe and the filled the dirt back in. Didn’t take long. My biggest issue with the whole thing was that it was so easy, why couldn’t it have been done correctly the first time?
I have to agree with previous posters who put the blame on laziness and incompetent work. I also agree with calling out the company and (hopefully) demanding the work be done correctly.
IF the new meters are bigger (taller) than the old ones, that might explain the boxes' height. But perhaps the meter could be leaned over so the box could be lower. Also, there are some automated meter systems in which there are parts of the meter connected to the top of the box (a flat little disc antenna or something), which may dictate the position of the box relative to the meter. I don't know if those are in use in Jackson.
SP and the commenters stating the water lines are "too high" are just ignorant.
Pictures of each installation were taken with the installers' phones. I can almost guarantee that each raised box was installed by the same 2 or 3 installers who were too lazy to dig out the opening to the proper depth and only dug it out enough to do the meter switch.
A Fool I Love but a Damn Fool I cant stand!!!!!
I have not gotten a water bill in 3 months. Is that a problem?
How about they are using the wrong boxes for the meter configuration? Two people have posted above that they easily modified their box.
So the key word is "flush". Why am I not surprised?
It’s not the pipes or the boxes, Jackson is sinking into the depths of hell.
January 12, 2023 at 12:46 PM yes, yes, yes. It is out of control. I don't live in Jackson anymore. I was born in Jackson and lived there most of my life. I had to move to another school district for my children. They not only didn't recieve the education they needed from an elementary school, but also were ridiculed for being differernt than everyone else in class. My neighborhood, where I bought my first home- in NE Jackson, is unrecognizable now. I loved Jackson. Loved. I am ashamed of what it has become. It needs a revamp and it can't happen fast enough.
Can we just stick to the problem at hand?
The meters should be flush. Those contracted/assigned to install should be required to go back and make them flush on their time/nickel.
Mine was installed properly.
Henlin is right in that it should be done correctly the first time. It's on the crew(s) who did a sorry job.
My neighborhood, where I bought my first home- in NE Jackson, is unrecognizable now. I loved Jackson. Loved. I am ashamed of what it has become. It needs a revamp and it can't happen fast enough.
The revamp is not going to happen. NEJackson is lost. It is following the same trajectory as all the other previously good neighborhoods. Those who tell you otherwise are living in denial.
Like an addict, Jackson won't return to its former greatness until it hits bottom. It will need a few more years under Chowke and his ilk to get there, but soon.
7:42, I agree. I also fear that, at worst, he's a plant by the woke EPA! Otherwise, how do you explain how Baby Chok would "allow" him to work in that capacity?
11:32 I agree wholeheartedly! Jackson - as a city - is now past the point of being saved. Period. Anyone who disagrees with this assessment, please provide solutions that can actually be put into practice. Short of a complete cultural pivot, saving it is now impossible.
"I'm leaning towards agreeing with 2:53's comment that Henifin is purposefully creating this "issue" with the meter boxes and delaying their installation, so he can justify billing based on home value and not actual consumption as measured by the meter boxes."
BINGO!!! I've got new meter, people were very professional and no problems. Meter company doing great job. Henifin has put a stop work order on the meter install. "In December, Interim Third-Party Manager Ted Henifin ordered Sustainability Partners to stop work on a project designed to install some 50,000 residential meters across the city, saying that many of the meter boxes are not flush with the ground." (WLBT, Contractors say meters installed to city specifications; oppose Jackson water manager’s stop work order)
Same article: "Henifin said it’s in the best interest of Sustainability Partners to do the work as soon as possible. 'Their contract is built on the number of meters and how many are actually sending accurate reads to the system,' he said. 'So, it’s in their best interest to figure out how to get this thing fixed and start installing more meters.'
Same article: Cain: “The city concluded that wasn’t a good use of taxpayer dollars to spend that kind of money just to make meter boxes lower, especially since lowering the meter boxes doesn’t do anything to improve performance,” he said. He says the third-party manager was initially concerned that the placement of the boxes could cause meters to freeze in inclement weather.
“We got the manufacturer involved, the vendor experts involved, to provide evidence that the height of the meter boxes... [has] no impact on the meters freezing,” he said. “The only thing you can do to keep the meters from freezing is actually lowering the whole service line. The meter box has no impact whatsoever.”
I'll take Sustainability Partners over the water czar.
And Wyatt's article in Northside sun "Opinion: Henifin’s solutions to solve water crisis are right on" might as well been edited by the water czar.
Dream On: Have you been drinking or do you not know your home's tax value or it is a decimal point/math word problem.
My bill was $50 this month and I have a sprinkler system as well as live in a high tax value neighborhood.
There is no possibility you have a home in the city limits that would result in $15000 a year.
I actually do know what the last houses in Eastover and CCJ got when sold.
Even ignoring tax assessment vs sale value, you are pitifully math challenged.
Methinks that Ted is a ringer approved by Chowke et al.
Looks like this is time for another study and discussion about tall water meters boxes. I am sure the city officials can come up with a contractor who specializes in repairing tall water meter boxes. Of course that contractor will not have a crew and he will have to sub out the job. Or maybe they can have a prayer meeting and pray for a miracle where all tall water meter boxes are shrunk down to ground level.
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