‘Bottom line, we screwed up’
Debra Wilson was one of three Henderson residents who expressed frustration about the Henderson Water Utility’s recent billing error that will cause some to pay catch-up bills accrued from undercharging on bills over several months.
Wilson, who is on disability, said when her $400 utility bills come, it takes two of her fiancée’s paychecks to get it paid.
“You add 80 dollars to my utility bill, you’re really hurting me,” Wilson said. She added that she’s not certain if commissioners grasp the financial difficulties of many in the city. “I don’t know if you understand that,” she said. “It’s hard.”
The errors occurred in the transmission of water usage coming from homes and going to the billing department. The water usage seen at the billing department dropped the final number of the total, leaving, for example, a 4,500-gallon water usage at a home to be seen as 450 gallons at the billing department.
This error caused about 2,200 residents to be underbilled; in some cases, those bills go back to July, and when added up on a catch-up bill will move into hundreds of dollars owed.
HWU has said that the errors began after the utility switched vendors. The vendor that HWU had received the first 6,000 water meters had programmed them to transmit correctly before delivering them to HWU. But the second vendor didn’t program the water meters. Neither HWU or the vendor, Core & Main, knew the programming needed to occur, which ultimately left more than 2,000 meters to transmit the incorrect usage.
To alleviate the brunt for some residents, the commission Tuesday evening approved a $25,000 allocation to a water utility assistance fund that would help them pay the catch-up bills. The city’s funding matches what the Henderson Water and Sewer Commission approved at a Friday meeting, moving the total of the fund to $50,000. Mayor Brad Staton said the city currently did not know how many people the fund could help.
“We will be meeting as the week goes along to set the parameters and will know more when they have been set,” he told the Hendersonian.
The commission additionally approved a 12-month payback schedule for the residents affected by the errors, which HWU officials said was first recognized in August and September.
Like Wilson, others in attendance weren’t happy with the errors or the way that the issue has been handled the past couple weeks.
Jay Randolph, a community advocate who recently created an online petition with 851 signatures in protest of the billing errors, said many people in the city do not have confidence in local government. He said he wants the city to investigate HWU and release a report to the public.
“If someone needs to be fired, then fire them,” he said. “It’s called accountability.”
Later in the meeting, Commissioner Rodney Thomas rejected any calls for firings.
“You fire people for a just cause, not a screw-up,” Thomas said. “This was a screw-up.”
Randolph also asked why errors in billing found in the summer weren’t reported to the city manager until November. City Manager Buzzy Newman didn’t directly answer the question, saying it took HWU several months to understand what was happening and now the city and HWU have come up with a best solution in offering plenty of time for customers to pay the catch-up bills.
Both HWU and city of Henderson attorneys have said that legally they can’t cover the cost of the catch-up bills. HWU in 2023 took out a $15.1 million revenue bond, which by ordinance requires the utility to collect all the charges of its service. If those covenants are not kept, the bonding company could pull the bond, which would leave the city needing to come up with an immediate $15 million to pay it off, City Attorney Dawn Kelsey said.
“Legally we have to collect that money,” Staton said.
Another resident, Amy Gardner, asked if those on auto-draft will be debited for the entire catch-up bill in addition to a regular bill when it is pulled from her account. Mayor Brad Staton said that has occurred so far with auto-draft customers.
Throughout the discussion about the water billing errors, city commissioners accepted blame for the mistake.
“Bottom line, we screwed up,” Thomas said. “This definitely should have been handled better. We’re trying to do the best we can” to fix it.
