By Jonathan Copsey / STAFF

If you had read the AJC recently, you’d think that the City of Milton was finally breaking free of its shackles and ridding itself of the nefarious CH2M Hill company. Of course, that’s far from the truth, although the fledgling city did just vote to terminate their contract with their partner.

CH2M Hill is a Colorado-based company that typically deals in municipal functions, but North Fulton has become something of an experiment for them; they are effectively running the cities. Every job in the cities of Milton, Johns Creek and Sandy Springs is a company job, by and large, with the exception of elected officials, public safety and certain high administration. The intent was to play with the old idea that companies can do what governments cannot: keep costs (and taxes) down.

“It was a wonderful agreement initially because we couldn’t have done it [start the city] without them,” said Councilwoman Karen Thurman.

Mayor Joe Lockwood was quick to point out that the contract termination was not due to any specific problems or grievances. It was simply to try and cut costs further than had already been cut. Milton’s contract is essentially to pay the company a yearly lump sum of over $5 million for all services rendered. When the economy took its nosedive, cities like Milton, whose tax base is mostly property-value based, had to cut back. Unfortunately, this led to some problems when CH2M Hill was reluctant to allow city officials to look into what the company could cut.

“We’re doing our budget right now, and during these difficult economic times, we decided that it was better as a city to not automatically have one third part provider who provides everything for us, and look for other options,” said Thurman. “They may be doing some things for us and we may do some things in-house… we need a little bit of flexibility.”

This is where concerns over how public money is spent come in. The contract signed with the company was for a lump sum; but when the company is running most of the city government, shouldn’t it be held liable to budget cuts just like anyone else?

They apparently didn’t think so. In the end, it was decided to terminate the current contract with the company in order to renegotiate for a better one, with more city positions under public control, which, said Lockwood, the city should be able to do as good if not better than CH2M Hill.