The Meridian City Council is continuing to weigh its options as it looks to address the shortage of licensed operators at the city’s wastewater and freshwater treatment plants after a third organization on Tuesday offered its services as well.

Staffing shortages at the city’s utility plants first came to light in January after the city’s longtime director of utilities retired. The City Council authorized a 30-day “triage” of the city’s systems by Waggoner Engineering to fully assess the situation and come up with potential solutions.

The council in March voted 3-2 to table a proposed 12-month contract with Waggoner Engineering that would have brought in 10 Waggoner employees to help run the city’s plants, train current city employees and recruit new workers for unfilled positions. The contract had a not-to-exceed amount of $150,000 per month or $1.8 million for the one year term.

On Tuesday, council members heard from H2O Innovation, which provides freshwater, wastewater and public works services, about what it may be able to do to help solve the city’s problem.

Brian Nelson, vice president for public works for H2O Innovation, said the company is ready to work with the council and city leaders to help meet Meridian’s long- and short-term needs. Whether that means serving in an oversight type role, training city workers or handling the day-to-day operations, H2O Innovation is ready to go, he said.

Nelson said his company recently hired a former Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality employee who was assigned to an area including Meridian. That knowledge, he said, gives his company a leg up in understanding the city’s systems and identifying its needs.

Scott Phillips of Waggoner Engineering, which also serves as project manager for the city’s consent decree efforts, said his company and H2O Innovation have previously worked together on other projects in the state.

Councilman Dwayne Davis said the city needs assistance in training its current employees across its utilities toward receiving the state certifications required to run the city’s utility plants. At the same time, he said, efforts to recruit licensed operators to fill vacancies are also sorely needed.

The council previously heard from the Mississippi Rural Water Association, which operates an apprenticeship program including several current city employees. However, Davis said, the MsRWA doesn’t have the staff to provide the level of help Meridian needs.

Both the MsRWA and H2O Innovation were invited to speak to the council by Davis who has been a vocal critic of Meridian’s public works department and the money it spends on outside engineering and consulting services.

After hearing from H2O Innovation, council members also heard from Phillips, who presented a revised version of the proposal tabled in March. Instead of 10 employees, he said, the revised proposal will bring in four workers, one for each of the freshwater, wastewater, line maintenance and utility divisions. The contract term of 12-months is unchanged, but the reduction in employees also brings the cost down to a not-to-exceed amount of $92,500 per month or $1.1 million total.

“What you have before you is a bare minimum leadership team,” he said.

Meridian has good employees, Phillips explained, but a lack of formalized procedures and standardized training has created a system where individual employees know how to do their own jobs but lack understanding of how the system as a whole operates. Without that bigger picture, he said, employees aren’t able to effectively prioritize tasks and know what they need to be doing each day.

“They’re dependent on senior people telling them what to do everyday,” he said. “And you’re out of senior people.”

Councilwoman Romande Walker said she would like to hear from the city employees currently working at the city’s plants and get their input on what needs to be done. The council, Waggoner and city administration can discuss it all they want, she said, but it’s the city employees who have to live with the decision.