You may be supplementing your neighbor’s bill
Back in May while we were discussing the budget I pushed back on water and sewer increases because I felt we could do more to ensure home owners were not supplementing the bills of other users. I submitted a FOIA request for a sample of a dozen properties I suspected were not paying individual bills to see if there were inequities and my FOIA request was answered with “document responsive to your request does not exist”. After my first request came back with no document exist I modified my request to see if refining my search to just 3 examples would produce any results (2 apartment buildings and a 2-bedroom house).
The 3 properties came back as only paying 1 water sewer bill for multiple units which I believe shows we are potentially losing thousands of dollars in revenues every year. One example was an apartment building on N. Irving with a business and 4 apartments and that owner is only paying one commercial bill which could be costing the town $6,200 a year.
The total estimated loss to the town on just those 3 examples could be over $10,000 a year. Some might try to argue that these are only apartments but why should you supplement apartment owners while your bills continue to go up when our code requires all units to pay. How is one apartment different than a single elderly person living in a house? I have discussed my concerns with the town manager and she said they were addressing this issue but, in my opinion, we need full transparency on this and council should direct town staff to do a full audit and address any violations before any more increases are allowed.
It was clear during our water sewer budget debates that each residential unit should be billed separately even if not on a separate meter so if we are losing thousands of dollars a year this is a no brainer. I do have other ideas that may help like treating short term rentals as businesses and ensuring any apartments even (garage apartments) are billed individually. This is about fairness and keeping costs down and, the only thing people like less than paying water sewer bills is paying for their neighbor’s water and sewer.
What can you do? Contact your elected representatives and let them know you want a full investigation before the next budget is passed and any inequities resolved.
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