MARFA — Mayor Manny Baeza and Public Utilities Director Chuck Salgado are refuting claims made by Councilmember Travis Acreman that the previous city manager was fired for being a “whistleblower.” Acreman went public with the accusations in a letter to the editor in last week’s Big Bend Sentinel, claiming Andrea Walter was terminated for discovering instances of “willful mismanagement,” primarily in the water and streets departments.
Walter was fired after a month and a half in the role, and will receive severance pay for three months. She has repeatedly declined to comment on the nature of her exit.
Council members who spoke with The Sentinel last week, including Raul Lara, Mark Morrison and Eddie Pallarez, denied that whistleblowing was the reason for her termination, citing other reasons like a failure to work well with city staff, all council members and the mayor. In a letter to the editor in this week’s paper, Baeza writes that Walter’s separation was a “joint decision between her and the city council,” an assertion also made by Pallarez.
In a council meeting last Thursday, Morrison said Acreman’s claims that Walter was fired for discovering wrongdoing were “patently false and misguided” and the city will continue to address the problems she highlighted.
In Acreman’s letter to the editor, and in subsequent talks with The Sentinel, he claimed that Walter had brought to light two primary issues at the city: vital street repair equipment left idle and hundreds of dead water meters, or those that do not record consumption, across the city.
Acreman claimed that the list of zero read meters included several “prominent, longtime residents and businesses,” and that other city utility customers with working meters were subsidizing free water for others.
In the Thursday council meeting, Salgado spoke during public comment in order to “clarify the misleading information and accusations” directed at his department. He first explained that there are several reasons why a meter may be classified as a zero read meter — it could be broken, not in use, turned off, inaccessible, or buried.
City Secretary Kelly Perez said the zero read meter list, which currently contains 225 meters, was created in 2023 after the city converted to new utility billing and accounting software that allowed for the generation of such a list.
In a follow up with The Sentinel Salgado said that his staff is still working to classify the list of dead meters, in order to determine which homes are vacant, abandoned and more.
Salgado further clarified to council that those with zero read meters are still paying a minimum fee for their water and preferential treatment is not given to anyone. “Although a meter has a zero read, the customer is still being billed the minimum amount per month, other customers are not being charged any extra amount to cover those zero read meters,” Salgado said. “Insinuating that we are essentially giving away free water to prominent long time residents and businesses is ridiculous and negligent. My department is not biased and treats all customers the same, regardless of who they are or their status.”
In a follow up exchange, Salgado said that, despite initial concerns sparked by Acreman’s claims, city utility customers are not paying more than their standard rate and consumption. “The city is not charging anything extra to cover the cost of lost revenue on a dead meter or delinquent customer,” he said.
Baeza also wrote in his letter to the editor that the city applies the same collections process for all account holders.
The current minimum monthly charge for water is $17.64 for both residential and commercial account holders inside city limits. The first 2,000 gallons used a month are included with that fee, then additional charges apply for more gallons used. For instance, customers using 2,001 to 5,000 gallons per month are charged an additional $4.08, while those using 5,001 to 12,000 are charged an additional $6.94. (Rates are higher for residential and commercial customers outside the city.)
In his letter Baeza said “the only potential result” of so many dead meters is “lost revenue to the city equal to the amount of water used but unbilled.”
At the meeting Acreman apologized to Salgado, stating that he didn’t mean to “disparage anyone working for the city,” but he remained convinced that the issue was causing financial strife for the city, including a half a million dollar deficit in the water department budget. “That would not be necessary if we were collecting all of the revenue that we are owed,” he said. Some of the accounts on the dead meter list, he said, are businesses with swimming pools.
While it is not the case that residents paying for all of the water they use, not just the minimum, are directly subsidizing the cost of water for others with dead meters, customers paying full price are paying more into the water utility generally speaking.
Meters are currently read manually once a month, sometime between the 10th and 20th day of the month, according to Salgado, and turned into the office for billing. He said reading the meters is super quick, and most of the time residents will not see staff performing the read. He said if someone has concerns about a high water bill, they can call City Hall and ask water department staff to check the leak detector on the meter.
Despite the fact that there have been ongoing discussions in City Council meetings, particularly during budget talks, about the need to install new smart meters — more reliable, automatic meters Salgado noted are “triple the cost,” compared to old meters — the dead meter list has never been brought up publicly before now, even though it has existed for two years.
“I think what we have is a failure of leadership to address the problems and to give you the resources that you need so that we can fulfill our responsibilities to our residents,” Acreman told Salgado at the council meeting.
A complete conversion of the city’s existing water meters to new smart meters is estimated to cost $800,000. In his letter Baeza writes that “in the interest of low water rates and taxes, the city does not have the financial means to replace all affected meters at once, therefore these meters are planned to be replaced over time.”
But the City Council didn’t budget any money for new smart meters this year, according to Salgado. Meters that have been purchased have come out of the water department’s regular supply budget, he said.
So far, 42 broken water meters have been replaced with smart meters, with another 24 on the way. Salgado said $27,210 has been spent on smart meters so far this fiscal year, amounting to approximately 42% of his department’s overall supply budget.
Salgado said smart meter purchases “in small amounts” began when Mandy Roane was still the city manager, but Walter “made it a top priority” for the water department and attempted to find the money to fund the entire $800,000 smart meter project. Salgado said meters targeted for replacement by Walter included commercial property and high-use estimated meters.
The city is continuing to look into street repair equipment issues and utility accounts in arrears. The Sentinel has requested a variety of public documents from the city and will cover updates as they become available.