When the Rockdale City Council hired 25-year U.S. Army veteran Chris Whittaker as city manager in December, 2014, some wry observer—looking at Whittaker’s logistics efforts in war-devastated Iraq—joked that probably Rockdale was the perfect place for him.
That turned out to be more prophecy than humor.
Within two weeks he was getting questions about Rockdale’s “red water.” For 70 years the city’s solution to crumbling water pipes and chronic treatment failure had been to kick the can a little further down the road.
Whittaker’s first words in Rockdale were “make a list and let’s after it.”
It’s been obvious for decades to anyone with a pulse that the only solution to that kind of infrastructure was to replace it—the whole thing.
Also obvious that in order to get that done somebody was going to have to step up and take the heat for an expensive, unpopular, long-term program which would spawn numerous rate hikes.
Whittaker was. He accepted the flak, almost certainly more than we’ll ever know.
It didn’t take long for some to see him as the public face of a problem Rockdale has been battling since the Truman Administration.
He also had to deliver some unpopular truths. Like the fact that “red water” is not the problem, it is a symptom of the problem, a failing, antiquated water system that currently loses between 3o and 4o percent of its water to leaks.
He leaves on Friday having started and nurtured a massive project to finally fix it.
There’s more, of course, including a new police station—a saga worthy of a Russian novel—improvements in parks, city government, economic development and others. None have been easy, many requiring a substantial amount of “heat-taking.”
From the point of view of the press, Whittaker was open, available and never shirked from answering any tough question or trying to make situations appear brighter than they actually were.
He also leant his considerable skills in doing his best to school The Reporter in the technical knowledge required in complex—sometimes opaque—workings of bureaucracies to enable us to fully report what was happening.
You just need someone who will take the heat. Chris Whittaker would. And did.—M.B.
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