Jackson Free Press

Last night, the city of Jackson and Mayor Chokwe Lumumba hosted a second town-hall meeting to address the proposed water-and-sewer rate increases, this time in the heart of Ward 3 at Progressive Missionary Baptist Church.

After opening speeches from Lumumba and Public Works Director Dan Gaillet, the audience peppered the mayor with complaints and questions. Most of the attendees spoke about their personal problems with the current water system, such as undrinkable water from one man's taps, inconsistent water billing sent to a woman's home and complaints of unusually high billing. The mayor answered them all, one by one.

But the mayor's explanations and Gaillet's presentation, designed to show how little the city was raising the rates for a proportionally large amount of water and why bottled water is a waste of money, did little to sway the opinions of those in the audience who spoke up in opposition to higher bills.

"(The presentation) didn't do anything for me," former Ward 3 City Council candidate Zachary Williams said. "They could have made things simpler and just talked about the nuts and bolts. They could have said, 'Alright, here's how much money we need, and here's when we need it, and here's what you are going to get for it.' Instead, there was a lot of talk about how we got into this situation."

Much of the mayor's staff was in attendance, and they did their best to provide documentation of the process and explain why the changes to the decades-old sewer system needed to be made, but in most instances, the explanations fell on deaf ears.

Joe Harvey, another Ward 3 resident, came out to express his displeasure with the water at his home at 4031 California Ave.

"The water is undrinkable," Harvey said after the meeting. "I have to go to the store and buy $40 of water to drink during the week, and now they are talking about raising the bill on the water I use through the system."

The proposed rate increases will help pay to bring Jackson's infrastructure into compliance with a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency consent decree. Jackson agreed to the decree in 2009, committing the city to spend $400 million on its wastewater management system over the next 17 years.

The City Council convened at 10 a.m. today with the purpose of passing the 2014 budget.