Tampa rejects bid to merge city, county water systems

City officials have rejected a proposal from Hillsborough County to consolidate the two governments' water systems.

Steven Daignault, Tampa's administrator of public works and utilities, said melding the city and county systems would produce few advantages for city customers, who pay lower rates than county residents.

"The city believes there is not an advantage for our utility customers to make it worth pursuing an evaluation and spending that kind of money on an evaluation," Daignault said.

County commissioners voted unanimously Nov. 4 to pay up to $400,000 for an evaluation of Tampa, Hillsborough County, Temple Terrace and Plant City's water departments. The study was to be done by the Broad and Cassel law firm, which has handled smaller public utility consolidations in the past.

Commissioner Jim Norman, who first proposed consolidating the four public water departments, said doing so would lower rates by millions of dollars, easily paying for the evaluation study.

But Tampa officials understood they would be expected to pay a large chunk of the study's costs.
Norman said Tuesday he was disappointed at the city's action but hoped future city and county administrations would revisit the idea.

"I believe if we consolidate water and sewer, rates would go down and you'd have one system to for all the customers," Norman said.

But there were early indications city officials were not enthused with Norman's proposal. A day after the commission voted to do the study, Mayor Iorio said the action caught her off guard. She questioned how the commission could have commissioned a study without checking first with city administrators.

And Tampa Councilman Charlie Miranda, an outspoken critic of the deal, said the city's water department assets are too valuable to relinquish to a new bureaucracy.

"To set up another board to sell our plant, our water, our sewer systems to -- it would not be to the benefit of the city of Tampa or the residents of the city," he said.

Steven Burton, managing partner of Broad and Cassel, said there still may be merit to studying a consolidation of the county's water system with Temple Terrace and Plant City's.