City officials hope in March to have a company that will take over the operation and maintenance of city’s water treatment plant on Haining Road.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen Monday authorized City Clerk Walter Osborne to advertise for bids to handle the plant’s operation and maintenance. Mayor George Flaggs Jr. indicated the city could be looking at signing a 10-year contract with a company to handle the work.

City Attorney Nancy Thomas said the board expects to receive proposals by March 7.

Flaggs said he, Thomas and Public Works Director Garnet Van Norman met with the eight city employees affected by the move. He called the meeting productive.

“I thought it incumbent as mayor to go face those people face-to-face and tell them we were outsourcing their jobs, and probably they won’t be working for the city of Vicksburg in the future, but they had options,” he said.

“They all understood the necessity of outsourcing this or contracting it out,” Flaggs said. “We promised them — at least I did — before I signed anything they would know as much as I know about who is going to be taking over and we would meet with them one-on-one. We offered anybody who wanted to go to work for another (city) department first opportunity to go to another department.”

He added, however, most of the open city jobs pay less than the water plant employees presently make.

The board’s decision to privatize water plant operations came on the heels of the Aug. 7 resignation of water plant director Pat McGuffie, who left to go to the Culkin Water District.

McGuffie’s decision left the city without a full-time, state-certified water plant operator, forcing the board to contract with a private company to provide a certified operator, because none of the current plant employees were qualified to be certified and the city was unable to hire a certified operator to meet the regulations.

“We had no other choice,” Flaggs said Monday. “We don’t have anybody within a 50-mile radius who applied for that job.”

He said the company presently providing the operator is there on a temporary basis.

The board in October hired the Jackson-based engineering firm CDM Smith, which specializes in water and environmental matters, to help city officials prepare requirements for requests for proposals from companies interested in taking over the water treatment plant.

The cost of the move and whether it will save the city money, is undetermined, although part of CDM’s contract requires the company examine the possible cost savings to the city. The fiscal 2016 budget for the water treatment plant is $5.072 million.

“We have to do due diligence and move forward with something, because one of the things we don’t want to be without is water,” Flaggs said. “I certainly don’t want to be in the situation as Michigan, particularly Flint, Mich. (where lead was discovered in the drinking water). Water is very critical to this city and we had no other choice.”

“We’re assuring continuity of the water system,” South Ward Alderman Willis Thompson said.

By having a contract with a company to operate and manage the water plant, he said, the city will ensure the quality of water.

“The plant itself will still belong to the city of Vicksburg. We’re just contracting the services of the water plant,” he said. “Other cities are doing this, also. For us, in this situation, it just seem the best decision for all the citizens of our city who rely on our water system to ensure we have certified and qualified personnel to operate that plant.”