A new municipal board has been seated to advise the Nashville Town Council on matters related to the town’s utilities.

The Nashville Utility Service Board was appointed in late December and met for the first time last week. The council passed an ordinance to create the board in October.

Historically, the elected officials of the town council have been the ones to have operational control of the utilities, working with a utility manager and/or the utility operator on matters such as rates, budgets, administration and capital projects.

The USB will act as a sort of oversight layer between the staff and council. However, the council will still have ultimate authority on most decisions.

The members of the USB, appointed by the council, are Roger Kelso, Bob Willsey, Ted Seastrom, Pam Gould and Alyn Brown. Three are Nashville residents and utility customers, and the other two are Nashville utility customers who live outside town limits.

Willsey likened the utility board’s role to that of a school board: the superintendent runs the district, while the board is there to evaluate, support and provide some direction to the leader.

Powers and duties of this board include fixing the number and compensation of utility employees; adopting rules for the appointment of employees; appointing a superintendent or utility manger who is responsible to the board for the business and technical operation of the utility; hiring attorneys and experts when required; submitting utility budgets to the council; recommending rates and charges for utility services to the council; managing the property of the utility; awarding contracts; adopting rules for the management and protection of the utility; and submitting monthly reports to the council.

The board probably won’t be doing all of those things, and certainly not right away, said Kelso, a former town superintendent who was elected president at the board’s organizational meeting Jan. 20.

For instance, town council President Jane Gore advised this new board against “jumping into” hiring a utility manager. The town has been without one since April 2020. Robin Willey, the Nashville wastewater treatment plant operator, and Phyllis Carr, the town administration manager, have been splitting those job duties since. “In my opinion, I think that should be way on the back burner to do anything like that because they are the knowledgeable ones,” Gore said about hiring a new utility manager or superintendent.

Gould asked Carr and Willey to make a list of what’s keeping them up at night to help the board focus on some priorities.

One of those is staffing, Willey said. Recently, the council made new hires to help bring the wastewater treatment plant up to a level that the state felt necessary. The Indiana Department of Environmental Management cited the town for several violations at the plant in the fall of 2019, and one of them was inadequate staffing to ensure compliance with IDEM regulations.

Willey said his time is still being pulled away from completing reports to more urgent matters like fixing water leaks, but things are getting better. One more person is coming on board and then the utility will be at full staff according to IDEM’s requirements, said Dax Norton, the town’s strategic direction adviser.

Other items on the IDEM violation list included an overflow at the plant which was not promptly reported to the state; having no preventative maintenance plan; placing a road salt pile and disposing of sludge in a way that could have allowed them to enter Salt Creek; and not responding to violation letters. Norton, who is also a former small utility manager, has been working with Willey and other staff to fix those things.

Norton said he would like to see the USB keep tabs on the status of the agreed order the town has with IDEM, and to help develop “process controls” for the plant, which are like standard operating procedures.

The town and the USB will have several other possible projects to work on in the near future. For instance, making all the fixes at the plant that IDEM recommended will cost $3 to $5 million, Norton said, and the council does not want to raise rates to do it, Gore added.

The town and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources also have been in talks over the past several months to possibly bring the state park on as a town utility customer, which would go a long way toward keeping the utilities financially stable, Norton said.

Norton and an engineering firm the town hired in the fall also are working on a plan to map the town’s stormwater infrastructure. Currently, the town has no stormwater utility and it also has inadequate drainage in parts of Nashville, which often leads to flooding. Creating a stormwater utility and instituting some kind of stormwater charge for residents also has been discussed at town council meetings, but no such utility has been set up yet.

Kelso predicted that by talking with the current utility leaders about the challenges they’re having, the board will have plenty of work to do without delving into many of the powers and duties the ordinance grants it.

The board decided to meet at 7 p.m. on the Wednesday before each town council meeting, which is usually the third week of each month. All town meetings are on Zoom for now. Agendas and links are posted at townofnashville.org and on the newspaper’s website and Facebook page so that anyone can click and participate.