Utilities Department at the City of Sunrise PDF

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Running Head: THE CITY OF SUNRISE

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The Utilities Department at the City of Sunrise Different governments both local and federal as well as administrative bodies have a mandate to provide various services to the public. To achieve this, it is important that the duties that these bodies are expected to perform are divided and delegated in an orderly fashion. This ensures that no areas are overlooked, and there is effective management of resources as well accountability. The most typical way of achieving this is dividing a single administrative body into different entities that are responsible for the implementation of mandated duties. For instance, the federal government has different departments that oversee the provision of crucial services such as the department of health and that of justice. Similarly, local governments and cities have such departments that bring these services closer to the people in a bid to increase accountability and effective management. The City of Sunrise is no different with several departments that span various sectors to ensure that its people are provided with amenities ranging from healthcare to water resources. This essay focuses on the Utilities Department by attempting to provide background information and some insight on the services provided in line with effective management in the public sector. The administrative entity of the City of Sunrise, Florida, is divided into sixteen (16) departments and services with the utilities department being the last in the group. All these departments are designed to work independently yet cooperatively to meet the requirements of the people within the cities’ jurisdiction. The Utilities Department is tasked with overseeing the provision of services that are meant for consumption by residents of the city such as water, sewerage, gas, and electricity. Since most of these services are directly responsible for the

3 THE CITY OF SUNRISE smooth day to day operations of the city, the importance of the utility department cannot be overlooked. To understand the working of the utilities department of the City of Sunrise, it is vital that we first explore its inceptions and history as well as the ideologies that supported its formation. The process of defining utilities as an independent department began in 2002 following the realization of an acute need to address rampant water shortages in the state of Florida. In 2011, Florida State passed the Community Planning Act to address the state’s water supply needs. This coupled with supporting pieces of legislation such as senate bills 360 and 444 pushed for the creation of bodies that would oversee the allocation, distribution, and management of water resources across the state especially in major cities such as the City of Sunrise(Sunrisefl.gov, 2017). Ultimately, this helped to cement the Utilities Department’s position in the administrative hierarchy of the City of Sunrise and led to the creation of a 10-year plan by the department to guide it in the achievement of long-term goals. The Utilities department has a system put in place to ensure that it can supply quality water to its residents, that either meets or exceeds state or/and federal preset standards. The utility system spans approximately 70 square miles and is designed to serve about 215,000 consumers in both the residential and commercial dockets. This system consists of over 700 miles of water piping, 500 miles of sewer lines and 200 wastewater pumping stations. Besides these amenities, there are also additional waste water treatment facilities and water re-pump facilities (Sunrisefl.gov, 2017).

4 THE CITY OF SUNRISE Apart from the management of water resources, the Utilities department also has a public works division. This division’s most crucial responsibility is the maintenance and repair of the system’s network of piping, canals, pumping stations, and reservoirs that are central to the delivery of water to the city’s residents. It is also responsible for the conditioning and repair of infrastructure within the city including public streets, recreation areas and some of the official city properties (Sunrisefl.gov, 2017). The Utilities Department also has a small but equally important division that oversees the provision of safe and reliable natural gas to nearly 10,000 residents of the city and its suburbs (Sunrisefl.gov, 2017). The gas administration division provides information to residential as well as commercial consumers that ensure safe utility and consumption of natural gas in homes as well as business places. In a nutshell, the above overview and background information on the Utilities Department is a depiction of how different entities that are mandated with managerial tasks, have put in place measures that ensure these tasks are accomplished in full as a reflection of effective management. The Utilities Department of the City of Sunrise was established to ensure that certain needs of its residents are met. It has done so by establishing an administrative framework that oversees the management of available resources by delegating these resources to individual divisions to streamline service delivery to the people of the city.

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Reference Sunrisefl.gov. (2017).City of Sunrise, FL : Utilities. [online] Available at: http://www.sunrisefl.gov/index.aspx?page=74 [Accessed 5 Oct. 2017]....