Oh Bus Boy!

The last item on the agenda for tonight's meeting comes from the outgoing Utility Director, Becky Mattey. Two weeks ago the Commission rejected Mattey's plan to outsource customer service, meter reading, utility billing and disputes, management of deposits, delinquent account tracking, reporting and collections. The Commission decided that if Lake Worth is going to be in the Utilities business and reap profits to support the general fund and pay for things like the Beach and Casino projects, Lake Worth ought to manage it's own customer service and not take on the expense of a middleman to deal with the complaints from LWU customers for the highest rates and utility taxes on the planet.

Tonight Mattey comes back to the Commission with a "You asked for it - You got it" proposal adding a new layer of executive management to the Utility with the re-classification of the Customer Service Manager position to that of Assistant Utility Director, Customer Service. The only reason this is coming to the Commission is because the last two times that Mattey hired a Customer Service Manager to take this mess off her plate, she did so at a $20,000 higher salary than what the position called for. The first time she did that, the unions filed a grievance and won. 

The City had a choice. Either pay the customer service manager within the approved salary range or raise everyone else by the same percentage. The salary was reduced and the new manager left. Not to be deterred, Mattey did it again and the union filed another grievance and that new manager said Thanks No Thanks, I'm outa here too!

So now the solution from the outgoing Utility Director is to hire a new bus boy, (you know, someone whose job it is to clear garbage off your plate), but to give that person a much better sounding title and a much better executive compensation package. This new executive, says Mattey, is the key that "opens the door to the development of a realistic plan that adequately will address not only superficial problems, but underlying causes, which can ultimately provide solutions to this decades old problem."

Apparently, it's not possible to hire a Customer Service Manager for less than $70,000 without also making them an Assistant Utility Director and paying them up to $85,000 plus benefits. Somewhere in that increase can the only candidate with the capability to "begin building a management staff" be found.

In Mattey's memo attached to the item, she also reveals her plan to fill two more Customer Service supervisory full time positions, five more Customer Service non-supervisory full time positions, and three more Customer Service part time positions. Note that these hires are not being presented as anything other than FYI to the Commission because they have really nothing to say about it.  The Commission's approval is only required to give Mattey's new bus boy a nice title and bigger chunk of change without incurring another grievance and the outside legal counsel expense to also mediate that grievance.

Is there anyone in the LWU service area, except in the private offices of the LWU, that doesn't know the biggest customer service complaint is THE SIZE OF THE DAMN BILL? I assure you that the Customer Service representatives who face actual customers every day know that. I assume that Commissioners who come face to face with actual residents at the public podium every meeting have heard something about that too. 

I guess the difference is there's no two minute timer to cut off customer complaints in the Annex Building when customers come in to question or dispute their bills or God forbid, beg for leniency when they just can't pay the whole thing this month. I guess the difference is there's no Civility Ordinance nor PBSO officers on site to make customers sit down and behave or leave after two minutes in the Annex Building.

Maybe before we add a new LWU executive with a new contract, higher pay and bigger compensation package, we try something else. Let the Mayor, all the Commissioners, the out-going Utility Director, the one Assistant Utility Director we have already and the Acting City Manager all take a day to sit behind the desks at the Customer Service office for eight hours. 

Let's make sure they have NO authority to mediate any problem that customers bring to them. Let's make sure they have to sit there and demand full payment or else and let's see how long they do that with a friendly gracious smile on their face. Let's even pay them minimum wage and see if that helps the eight hours go by any faster. And then let's call them lazy, greedy, good for nothing, heartless, revenue sucking, civil servants who are incapable of providing adequate customer service by wiping these complaints clean off the LWU's brass plates.

After all, these complaints come from the know-nothing public who can't tell the difference between the Minimum Customer Service Usage Fee and the Fuel Adjustment Surcharge.