City reaches a fair deal for water bill snafu

Recently, city officials agreed on a deal to settle up on water bills with a few hundred property owners.
What happened was that the city’s meter equipment underreported actual consumption of water and sewer services. When new meters were installed, over 300 folks received bills for hundreds of dollars — and in some cases thousands, for service that had not been reported.
Obviously, many folks were upset at receiving that bill.
So, the city administration and city council agreed that the city will eat 60 percent of the corrected bills, and property owners will have to cough up 40 percent of the new bill.
That’s a generous solution considering that although the meters were under-reporting water and sewerage usage, that service was actually used.
In other words, propriety owners are getting a deal.
This episode underscores a disconnect in city hall. How in the world did this problem go undetected for so long?
And by so long we mean this problem could have been going on for several years.
It’s mind-boggling to say the least.
A silver lining to this mess is that under the current acting city manager’s administration, problems are being fixed. Let’s hope whoever gets hired as the new city manager continues to address problems rather than let them linger.

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