Much like Flomaton's decision to have a firm come in and help the town develop a Form Base Code in hopes of creating economic opportunities for the town, the town of Century took a positive step Monday night by hiring former Gulf Breeze Manager Edwin 'Buzz' Eddy to come in and help the town not only evaluate but to turn around their utility departments which have been struggling to reach black ink for years.
There's that old saying about not seeing the forest because of the trees and sometimes it takes a different set of eyes to focus on what needs to be done.
Enterprise accounts like water, sewer and gas should not just break even they need to make a profit. Nobody likes to raise rates, but if it costs the town X to provide utilities, the people receiving those utilities need to pay X, plus some.
We cover the council meetings in Jay, Century and Flomaton and probably a month doesn't go by that the utilities superintendent in either town doesn't report to his or her council that something has broken and needs to be fixed. It could be a lift station for the sewer or a valve for the water. Most of the times those issues are urgent and the money to fix those issues should come out of the specific enterprise fund.
In a perfect world, water should pay for water, sewer should pay for sewer and gas should pay for gas. It doesn't always work that way and we understand funds need to be transferred from one account to another to not only make repairs, but to maintain services.
Having someone like Eddy come in with no agenda to evaluate and recommend changes to the Century Town Council is a very positive step. Like Flomaton dealing with the adoption of a Form Base Code, the Century Town Council will vote at the table to accept Eddy's recommendations or go in another direction.
But from our point of view it was a very positive step on behalf of the Century Town Council. Listen to what Eddy says and vote at the council table.
