By Ashleigh Ruhl, Correspondent

For Long Beach leaders, it may be time to consolidate city-operated utilities under the same management and regulation.

For the first time since the city’s Water Department and the Gas & Oil Department were created more than a century ago, the Long Beach Water Commission on Thursday will consider a proposal to merge water and sewer services with natural gas services into one department.

If commissioners support the proposal, which requires an amendment to the Long Beach City Charter, it would then be up to Mayor Robert Garcia to convene the Charter Amendment Committee (the entire City Council), then the City Council itself, to put it on the ballot. The final approval would be a public vote in November this year.

“This has been discussed for many years,” Water Department General Manager Chris Garner said. “We have two utilities that are not under the same governance, and we are really the only city like this in California.”

Currently, the gas utility’s director is hired by and reports directly to the city manager; gas rates are approved by the City Council. In contrast, the water utility’s general manager is hired by and reports to the Board of Water Commissioners, and the board also sets water rates and policies, which are subsequently approved by the City Council.

What’s being proposed is that the Water Commission changes into a Utilities Commission that would oversee the new consolidated department. The city manager would have a strong voice in the appointment of the department’s General Manager, subject to approval by the Utilities Commission.

Although the idea has been brought up many times before, city leaders said they believe the consolidation is possible today because of the strong spirit of collaboration and cooperation that exists among the mayor, City Council, city manager, water commission and the directors of the two utilities.

“We’ve talked abut this for years and years, but the thing that prevented it from happening was not the potential benefits but a question of who gives up control: the city manager or the Water Commission,” Garner said. “So it never happened. The attempts failed. But right now there is a level of trust and cooperation we haven’t had before.”

Garner, who directed tGas & Oil before moving to the water department, supports the consolidation, he said, mostly because he believes it will reduce redundancies and improve efficiency. For example, he said the utilities could perform street evacuations and repairs in coordinated efforts, rather than the separate operations happening now.

Gas & Oil Director Robert Dowell shared similar sentiments. He noted that customer service would improve because people could call one department, instead of two, to shut off water and gas to their home or business.

Both men emphasized that the move is not expected to impact the General Fund and is not about downsizing employees — in fact, they said they believe combining the two departments will provide employees with more opportunities for promotions or lateral moves.

“The intent is not workforce reduction, it’s about efficiency,” Dowell said.

The departments have nearly the same number of employees – about 250 at the Water Department and about 230 at Gas & Oil. Both departments operate with similar annual budgets, too, about $100 million, according to Garner.

Even in terms of their own positions as leaders of their respective departments, Dowell and Garner said they plan to work together in their new roles, even if they aren’t yet sure exactly what that will look like.

“The beauty of this is that there is nothing broken on the gas side or the water side, and the same amount of work still exists,” Garner said, noting that some jobs that overlap may eventually be eliminated through attrition, but no one is expected to lose their job in the short-term.

The consolidation of the departments would not impact utility prices for service, but Garner said any future price changes to water and gas could be weighed as a whole once the departments are merged.

“A benefit to the customers is that when we set water and gas rates, currently that’s done in a silo fashion with separate considerations,” Garner said. “With one body overseeing both, if there’s a rate increase on both sides there’s a sensitivity to customers about that so we can temper one side.”

Long Beach’s Water Commission meets at 9 a.m. Thursday at 1800 E. Wardlow Rd. The meeting is open to the public.

If approved by the voters at the election in November, Garner said the consolidation would likely happen in early 2019.