Dredging of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir is coming closer to a reality, one board meeting at a time. And on June 23, the one that counts the most—the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA)—voted unanimously to have staff put together a request for proposals from consulting firms to study dredging. It will put aside up to $300,000 from its reserve for the study and set an early August deadline for bids.
But dredging isn’t the only proposal being looked at as a result of this most recent round of RWSA criticism. Some local leaders are interested in possibly changing the RWSA Board so that it includes some elected officials.
 The RWSA Board, composed of Judith Mueller, Gary O’Connell, Chair Mike Gaffney, Bob Tucker and Gary Fern. |
“I certainly intend at some point to raise that issue,” says city Mayor Dave Norris. “I do think given the stakes involved, particularly the amount of money involved, having some elected officials on that Board makes a lot of sense.”
“I’ve been advocating that for about four years now, that we need to change the make-up of that Board,” say Ken Boyd, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors.
Currently, the five-person RWSA Board is made up of four ex-officio members: the city manager (Gary O’Connell); the city director of Public Works (Judith Mueller); the county executive (Bob Tucker); and the director of the Albemarle County Service Authority (Gary Fern). The chair is appointed to a two-year term, and the responsibility alternates between the city and county. Mike Gaffney, a homebuilder, has been chair since 2003. As former city councilor and RWSA critic Kevin Lynch is fond of saying, the water authority’s board is made up of “four bureaucrats and a developer.”
It’s far from clear that the RWSA Board has been unresponsive to the public, but a recent change in state law regarding conflict of interest has made for some odd RWSA votes. For instance, only Gaffney votes on wholesale rates because the other four Board members are employees of the localities that would be charged.
One way to get elected representation on the RWSA Board would be to expand it to include a city councilor and a county supervisor for a seven-person Board. But Boyd wonders if the representation of the Board should be based on usage, which he thinks might give the county more of a say.
Changing the Board’s make-up would require the agreement of all four parties—the city, county, ACSA and RWSA—to amend the four-party agreement. The Board has only been changed once, in the 1980s after the ACSA was created.
Not all local leaders are sold on changing the RWSA Board. Supervisor Dennis Rooker says he would take a look at a change, but he doesn’t think the current system is broken.
“Bob Tucker is certainly subject to our Board’s instruction regarding significant issues, so whether we are represented by Bob or we’re represented by a Board of Supervisors member, in either case, I think that person is subject to Board direction regarding major issues,” Rooker says. “So I don’t know that there is a great distinction there.”
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