Water Department Superintendent MaryBeth Wiser has resigned as of Jan. 1, 2021. The change will mean another recruiting push for the embattled department, which has seen budget and personnel turmoil resulting in substantial capital spending and water rate increases.
Wiser said she was retiring in her letter of resignation she sent in September to the Water Commission, which voted to accept it at its November 3 meeting. Wiser did not return a call and email requesting comment.
“From my perspective, [the resignation] was her choice. We double-checked with and gave it due process and an appropriate amount of time to make sure it was not just a fleeting dissatisfaction,” Water Commission Chair Jim Hutchinson said this week.
Almost from the start of her tenure in March 2018, there was conflict between Wiser and the other department employees. Several of them alleged she was unqualified and abusive and complained to town officials about her, according to minutes of the commission’s August 8, 2018 meeting and interviews with the Lincoln Squirrel in October 2019.
But commission member Ruth Ann Hendrickson lauded her accomplishments during a difficult period for the department. “MaryBeth worked her heart out while she was here in Lincoln. She was focused on bringing the department up to the latest standards,” she said. “Everything she did was about improving the quality of the water and the management structures of the department. She worked incredible hours and was on call 24/7 for months. She never let us down and did her best to keep everything running. For that, the commissioners will always be grateful.”
Since Wiser’s arrival, the Water Department has spent millions on capital projects to replace aging equipment as well as for outside consultants to cope with staff vacancies after several resignations amid an ongoing statewide shortage of qualified operators. As a result, the town has approved loans totaling almost $2 million, and the department’s operating budget for the current fiscal year is 38% higher than last year’s. Customers also saw water rates hikes of 25% in 2019 and 28% in 2020.
At her most recent annual review in August, the Water Commission “commended Superintendent Wiser for her tremendous efforts and very long hours this past year” and said it “greatly values Ms. Wiser’s strong initiative, dependability, and loyalty” as well as her understanding of water science and state regulations pertaining to public water supplies. The commission identified budget management, personnel management, and communications as areas in which she needed improvement.
Hiring date for new superintendent unclear
If past history is any indication, it could take some time to fill the superintendent opening. The job posting offers a salary of $96,506 to $111,878, “but we don’t know yet what we’ll need to pay,” Hutchinson said. The town had to raise its salary offer to fill at least one of the earlier vacancies.
The future superintendent will also need additional qualifications to oversee new pretreatment coagulation equipment that’s about to be installed. That equipment will solve a problem stemming from the fact that Flint’s Pond has twice the level of organic matter as it did when the plant was designed in 2002. Meanwhile, the department plans to seek more capital spending in the next fiscal year to replace the aging Tower Road well.
“It behooves us to get a strong candidate to keep the department back on track as we’ve labored to do in the last year,” Hutchinson said. However, because of the job requirements and ongoing shortage of qualified candidates, it’s quite possible that Assistant Town Administrator Dan Pereira may have to step in after Wiser’s departure as acting superintendent for the administrative side of the job.
What’s down the road?
Thanks to the recent and upcoming expenditures, the water treatment plant will soon be almost like new — but the commission and new superintendent will still have to grapple with the future direction of Lincoln’s public water supply. Consultants Tata and Howard are expected to deliver a preliminary report next month outlining three options: continue to upgrade and modernize the existing plant, build a new plant with a more modern design that’s less costly to operate, or join the MWRA and get its water from the Quabbin Reservoir.
The current plant was “one of the first of its kind… it’s old technology,” Hendrickson said. “Every five or six years, these plants need to be overhauled, and even if we decided today to join the MWRA, it would take about five years, so it’s a good time to start this study.”