The stormwater fee increase of 1992 was the last large rate increase sought in MSD’s first half-century.
There were no rate increases in 1993. In 1994, a series of small yearly increases in the wastewater rates began; at the same time, the rate schedules for commercial and industrial customers were adjusted gradually so that each class of customers would pay its proportionate share of the cost of treating the wastewater.
In 1996, the MSD Board approved a five-year budget strategy that called for keeping the stormwater and wastewater rate increases at five percent or less each year, while cutting labor costs two percent a year through staff reductions and holding increases in operating costs to three percent or less each year. The strategy also called for investing an average of $65 million per year in plant, lines, and drainage and flood protection.
MSD Photos by Martin E. Biemer
Reorganizing For The Future
By the early 1990s, MSD’s activities and staff had expanded so much that they had outgrown the downtown headquarters building constructed in the late 1960s. In 1993, the Board approved buying a larger office building, located one block west, and renovating it for a new headquarters.
MSD Photo by Martin E. Biemer
After nearly two years of work, including improvements that made it one of the nation’s charter Energy Star Showcase buildings for energy efficiency, MSD occupied its new headquarters in December, 1995, consolidating functions that had been located in several different buildings.
At the same time, MSD began moving to a multidisciplinary teamwork approach to management, and negotiated a five-year contract with unionized employees that included programs to improve labor-management relations. And in 1996, MSD began reorganizing many of its activities by watershed, coordinating all of its efforts that affect the quality of the water in a stream.
MSD History continued - MSD Becomes a Leader In Encouraging Equal Opportunity, Diversity
