Joining three U.S. cities, Bullhead City, the City of Tolleson, the City of Brea, with one small Mexican municipality, San Juan de los Lagos, resulted in an effective partnership that improved the operations of the municipality’s water and wastewater system and of the Administration and Finance Department.

First, the U.S. partners evaluated the water and wastewater system controls in San Juan de los Lagos and trained municipal employees in techniques to improve water quality controls for the Lagos River.

Next, San Juan de los Lagos received training in techniques to better operate water and wastewater systems. The U.S. counterparts also provided advice on successful capital improvement plans for water utilities. The Mexican partners learned about the advantages of standardizing materials and equipment and of developing programs to measure efficiencies within a distribution system.

Municipal employees put all these new skills to use as they developed and carried out a program to document department activities related to the water treatment plant and pump sites, including operational and maintenance logs. Moreover, in an effort to improve water use control, the municipality installed meters for high-consumption businesses in the community, including the 69 hotels in its jurisdiction. 

The U.S. partners worked with the municipal Administration and Finance Department to improve tax collection and communications. After receiving this assistance, San Juan de los Lagos developed a new financial system that tracks costs by department. More importantly, the municipality implemented a financial monitoring strategy that compares expenses against the municipality’s approved budget. With respect to increasing collections, the municipality improved coordination among its revenue collection offices to preclude any one office from giving permits or licenses to citizens who have not settled debts with the municipal government. The municipality also updated property registries and value assessments, which significantly increased property tax revenues for the municipality.