The president of the Athens City Council said a new manager for the city’s water and wastewater services may be chosen at the council’s next meeting.

Council President Harold Wales said Thursday he’s ready to move forward on naming someone to the post, which has been vacant since Frank Eskridge resigned in February. Since then, the department has been managed by Betty Kiep, a longtime department employee.

Mayor Ronnie Marks and Human Resources Director Marsha Sloss recently interviewed the four candidates the council will have to choose from. Those candidates include two current city water and wastewater employees, sewer superintendent Virgil White and water treatment operator Brian Daniel. The two other candidates are:

• Jimmy Junkin, who most recently served as executive director of the Brunswick-Glynn County (Georgia) Joint Water and Sewer Commission; and

• Austin Fogg, a senior manager at GE Appliances who also served as an engineering intern at Federal-Mogul. Fogg’s online resume does not mention any previous water or wastewater experience.

Before taking the job in Brunswick, Georgia, Junkin worked for about 19 years for the city of Tuscaloosa. A report by Taylor Cooper in the May 3 Brunswick News claims he “made waves” early in his tenure because of “candid comments about the extent of repairs needed to bring the existing public water and sewer systems up to peak condition,” the report said.

The same report said Junkin resigned in May because some members of the Joint Water and Sewer Commission’s governing body “wanted (Junkin) gone,” though the claim was made by a source speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Wales said he was pleased by the quality of the final candidates. He added he was surprised most of them met qualifications as outlined in the job description.

One of the big concerns for Wales that the new water and wastewater manager be able to right the department financially. The city’s wastewater department traditionally operates in the red, and Wales wants that trend to change.

“That department has been upside down since I’ve been on the council,” he said. “It’s time we had a new manager who can sit down and work out a plan to where we can get the department to stand on its own. We need to come up with a plan to shorten the time it takes for us to recoup our investment.”

Timeline

Mayor Ronnie Marks said he would like to have the new manager in place by mid-October.

Time is of the essence because the city is in negotiations with the city of Huntsville regarding territory and where sewer boundaries begin and end. The council recently approved spending up to $100,000 to allow Krebs Engineering to develop an infrastructure master plan for the southeastern and southwestern parts of the city limits. That plan will determine a path for Athens’ sewer growth.

The council also recently agreed to rezone property on Quinn Road to single-family, high density residential district for a future housing development. Doing so guaranteed the city would spend $260,000 to run a sewer line to within 500 feet of the development.

“It’s too important of a position to put it off,” he said. “We need someone who can hit the ground running.”