It's too important an issue to remain silent.

The Metropolitan Milwaukee Sewerage District is set to continue its coziness with outside operators -- in the most recent incarnation with Veolia, a French-run Houston-based wastewater treatment plant operator.

The MMSD board decided to dump its deal with United Water after Veolia agreed to charge the district less for its services over the next 10-year deal. United Water's tenure included legal and illegal sewage dumping into Milwaukee's waterways. Staff cuts and operator errors were in part to blame. It paid the district about $335.4 million in a 10-year deal that's about to expire.

While it appears the Veolia contract is a done deal, some are hoping that the MMSD board will look into bringing the sewage operation back in-house. That is not the recommendation by MMSD executive director Kevin Shafer, who says that would be more expensive. It is, however, the hope of several environmental groups that have closely watched MMSD in action.

In a detailed four-page letter sent out this week, the groups -- Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers, Midwest Environmental Advocates, the Sierra Club and the Alliance for Great Lakes -- note some questionable issues in the proposed contract. While details of the contract have not fully been disclosed by the District, the groups suggest the plan is flawed in several ways:

They contend that the current monthly bonus system for not having overflows isn't a deterrent and that operators should be fined for overflows. The groups also contend that the bonuses created a situation in which test results could be manipulated to show the waste was cleaner than it actually was.

The groups say that the new contract allows the operator to pay only the first $15,000 of any equipment repair, essentially rewarding contractors for not maintaining equipment since they don't have to pay for major maintenance.

The new deal will have the district paying for 75 percent of its energy costs, which was essentially the savings in the previous contract. Opponents of the deal argue that if the district is paying for the bulk of its energy costs anyway, why go private?

Staffing cuts have led to problems with maintenance, morale and lack of supervision.

District officials were kept in the dark over various malfunctions and no mechanisms exist to penalize the private operator when they happened.

"We have significant concerns with continued privatization of wastewater treatment services at MMSD and encourage the commission to seriously consider returning operation and maintenance to a public system," according to the letter.

The board will decide Monday.

Overseeing bids is costly: It's a big contract and that's why one Milwaukee alderman wants some independent input on who gets it.

The contract for the city's parking ticket collection is up in May and it's worth millions to anyone who wants to step to the plate. The private operator is charged with collecting tickets and pursuing scofflaws and gets a cut of the action for its efforts. Ald. Bob Bauman has proposed that the Department of Public Works also go to an outside consultant to help the DPW put together a fool-proof bidding process. His plan would spend up to $80,000 for the advice. His resolution cites that the parking ticket contract is complex enough to justify the costs.

The folks in charge of the DPW bidding process have come under occasional fire for questionable procedures. One example is seen in the Milwaukee Police Department radio system, which doesn't allow communication with other law enforcement agencies. DPW bidding proposals asked for a system that was too restrictive. Some parties involved in that spat suggested DPW set it up so that the deal was a given to go to one manufacturer. A recent plan to job out the operations of city parking lots was halted by one alderman after the bidding process was found geared toward one operator and wasn't considered entirely open.