Mayor George Flaggs Jr. said he expects to recommend a 10-year plan for the city’s infrastructure system to be ready for the Board of Mayor and Aldermen in about two weeks.

“I’ve come upon the conclusion that it is incumbent on this administration  — and the administration after this administration — to start looking at long-term planning for this city and stop looking at from election to election, four-year planning,” Flaggs said Friday.

“That’s the problem we’ve got now. We have inherited a lot of issues because we’ve never had long-term planning of these projects and stuff. If we want to move forward, we’ve got to have a pathway to the future so that the citizens can get the benefit of our service. We’re going to get somebody to study it, so we have on record a plan as to how we lead the investment of the city to address infrastructure.”

His announcement came as the board Monday authorized City Attorney Nancy Thomas to begin contract negotiations with ESG Operations of Georgia to operate the city’s water treatment plant and a brief discussion about an 8-inch waterline that broke under the city’s 36-inch mainline, leading city workers to think the mainline broke. The damaged line, which was repaired, was not on any city map.

He said the plan will include recommendations “on what we need to do as it relates to infrastructure to include sewage, include water, to include all the things having to do with infrastructure,” including a review of the city’s costs to provide water and sewer service to customers.

Flaggs said the increasing cost of providing sewer service has put the city’s water and sewer system at a deficit. He said a $5 EPA fee the city began charging in June 2015 to develop a fund to cover sewer system repairs under a 2012 consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency, has been going directly to the sewer system to help cover operations.

“That money was supposed to go into a trust fund designed to offset the bond issues to fix the systems,” he said, “but instead, it’s being used to shore up the cost of operating the sewer system.”

He said he did not know how much providing sewer service was costing the city, adding he asked city Accounting Director Doug Whittington to examine the costs. He added the cost of providing water and sewer to residents was part of the city’s infrastructure situation.

Flaggs pointed out the city is looking at replacing a clarifier at the wastewater treatment plant on Rifle Range Road, and replacing the electrical consoles at the water treatment plant on Haining Road.

The wastewater clarifier, one of two at the plant, popped out of the ground in February and will have to be replaced, Public Works Director Garnet Van Norman said. He said the estimate to replace it has not been determined, but Flaggs put the cost at $5 million.

The electrical system at the water plant is outdated and has been the source of at least one power outage at the plant that forced city officials to issue a boil water notice. Cost to replace it is estimated at $4 million.

Under the EPA consent decree, the city is required to assess, map and upgrade or replace its 107-year-old sewer system over 10 years. The estimated cost of assessing the system is about $3 million a year. No estimate was available for repairing the first one-tenth of the system that has been evaluated, because the project has not been advertised for bids.

Flaggs said he also wanted to find a better way of locating leaking waterlines rather than wait for a complaint of water running out of the ground.

“There’s a much better technical way to identify leaks,” he said. “This is important. I bet you probably have more than 30 percent unaccountable uses of water in this city. The national average is 30 percent unaccountable. We’ll need to look at it.”