Assembly questions cost and scope of Jacobs amendment for Anchorage Water and Wastewater strategic plan; no vote taken

At a June 6 Anchorage Municipality work session, Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility (AWWU) General Manager David Persinger presented a proposed amendment to a Jacobs Engineering Group contract to move from a drafted strategic plan into implementation under the Effective Utility Management framework. The assembly asked for a detailed cost breakdown and additional documentation; no vote was taken.

Persinger said the work will focus on four strategic goal areas — community sustainability, financial viability, operational optimization, and employee leadership and development — and emphasized a deep dive on employee and executive leadership development, plus building key performance indicators and a public-facing dashboard. "Our mission is to protect the health and welfare of the public and the environment by providing responsible water and wastewater services," Persinger said.

Why this matters: AWWU’s capital program and workforce directly affect customer rates and service reliability. Persinger told the assembly the utility runs a capital improvement program of roughly $70,000,000 a year, and that the customer information system (CIS) supports about…