The gang that can't--or won't--shoot straight (City of Morristown) just got itself into another pickle over its belated efforts to have outside water utility districts include Morristown's $10/month garbage fee on the utility's water bills to city residents.
Yesterday, the Alpha-Talbott Utility District Board met and voted NOT to include the City of Morristown's $10/month garbage fee on AT water bills that go to city residents. AT won't do Morristown's dirty work--pun intended!
[Bobby Moore, "news"paper reporter/City of Morristown PR person, had reported on December 2: "Phillip Combs, Alpha-Talbott manager, said that if other utility districts don’t experience problems, he will start billing the 42 qualifying customers..."
Somebody missed the reporting boat or things took a dramatic turn from December 2 to December 6. On December 6th--4 days after Moore's quote from Combs--the AT Board met and voted NOT to bill for Morristown's garbage. It looks like Alpha-Talbott wasn't basing its decision on what other utilities did nor was AT waiting to see if other utility districts had problems.]
Next comes Russellville-Whitesburg Utility District. The Russellville-Whitesburg Utility District Board is scheduled to vote toward the end of December on whether to include the City of Morristown's $10/month garbage fee on RV-WB water bills that go to city residents.
[RV-WB is leaning strongly toward joining AT in refusing to do Morristown's dirty work, but you never know what will happen when Morristown power players jump in and start to twist arms.]
So far, the only outside utility district that Morristown has convinced to do Morristown's garbage billing is Witt Utility District. Coincidentally, Witt recently got an extension of its water contract with Morristown.
Now---is it legal to send some city residents a garbage fee bill while other city residents are not billed?
Who let this go for nearly four months before even giving these utility districts a billing list and officially asking them to do Morristown's garbage billings?
Showing posts with label Russellville-Whitesburg Utility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russellville-Whitesburg Utility. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Sunday, December 05, 2010
December 5, 2010 How's That City of Morristown Garbage Fee Working Out For City Residents?
We're going on 4 months now, and the City of Morristown continues to bill its new $10/month garbage fee to some city residents but not to others.
Failure to bill is no problem if you are one of the unbilled city residents.
Failure to bill is very unfair, however, if you are getting a bill and paying for a city service (garbage pick-up) while the City has not sent a single bill to other city residents.
Graciously, the City has said that it doesn't intend to go back and bill the "unbilled" for the four months (as of now) of free garbage service. That's certainly fair to the unbilled.
But what's fair to those who have been paying for four months already? The City needs to stop billing the City residents who have already been billed for four months of garbage pick-up until all city residents have been billed an equal number of months. That's fair and equitable to ALL city residents.
The whole garbage fee and garbage billing fiasco are classic examples of government mismanagement at its best. City leaders should have taken care of the financial mess they created without inventing a new way to take money out of the wallets of the already suffering citizenry. But that's not the way things operate in the City "Taj Mahal" Center or in most any government building.
Instead of being accountable and trying to save money, Mayor Barile and company just increased property taxes, increased sales taxes through a "pick-your-poison" sales tax referendum, put in red light cameras, illegally transferred/loaned money from one fund to the other, and then tacked on a garbage fee for a city service that had always been provided through tax payments until new City Administrator Tony Cox arrived.
Bobby Moore, who writes press releases in the "news"paper for the City of Morrist, oops, who writes "news" for the Citizen Tribune, recently ran a second article on December 2, 2010, trying to explain the City's failure to bill some city residents (those city residents who receive water from Alpha-Talbott, Witt, and Russellville-Whitesburg Utility Districts) while going on and billing others (those city residents who receive water from MUS).
In his most recent opus, Bobby explains that the City has now (November 29) sent garbage fee billing lists to the three surrounding utility districts and has asked the utilities to include Morristown's garbage fee on the utility's water bills.
Bobby adds that the utility districts "could begin collecting Morristown's...$10/month garbage fee at the end of December." Actually, it's the billings that "could" go out in December (or not) but the collection of any money by the utility districts can't take place until January 2011 at the earliest. And even that is not a sure thing.
When Bobby Moore was doing his first CMA (Cover Morristown's rear-end) article on November 18, he reported that the failure to bill all city residents stemmed from "billing difficulties" with the Utility Districts. For some reason, Bobby failed to explain then that actually the City hadn't even sent a billing list to the Utility Districts.
I guess you could term not providing a list of city residents to the utility districts and not authorizing them to include Morristown garbage bills on the utility's water bills a "billing difficulty," but those certainly aren't billing difficulties created by the districts.
On November 24, I pointed out that the "billing difficulties" with the utility districts were that the City had not authorized the utility districts to bill the fee. Click here. Now Bobby reports pretty much the same thing and adds that the City has finally given each utility a list of garbage fee customers and has asked/authorized the utility districts to send out garbage bills.
Now that the City has given the Utility Districts a billing list and the go-ahead to bill, other problems have come out. At least one utility, RV-WB, doesn't have software with the capability of handling yet another billing task for the City of Morristown. [RV-WB already bills its customers for RV-WB water and includes Morristown sewer and Morristown stormwater charges on the bills that go to Morristown residents.]
The RV-WB utility board will meet toward the end of December and vote on Morristown's request that RV-WB include yet another Morristown fee on RV-WB water bills.
Since most customers look at their water bill as a lump sum, adding the $10/month Morristown garbage fee to RV-WB water bills may inadvertently create ill-will toward RV-WB, the billing agent, instead of ill-will toward the real culprit, the City of Morristown.
Watch for that RV-WB vote. Morristown power players will be applying behind-the-scenes pressure on RV-WB to go on and handle the Morristown garbage billings and not rock the boat. We'll see if TPTB can apply enough pressure to get another utility to take flak for Morristown's financial failings and continued lack of accountability.
Failure to bill is no problem if you are one of the unbilled city residents.
Failure to bill is very unfair, however, if you are getting a bill and paying for a city service (garbage pick-up) while the City has not sent a single bill to other city residents.
Graciously, the City has said that it doesn't intend to go back and bill the "unbilled" for the four months (as of now) of free garbage service. That's certainly fair to the unbilled.
But what's fair to those who have been paying for four months already? The City needs to stop billing the City residents who have already been billed for four months of garbage pick-up until all city residents have been billed an equal number of months. That's fair and equitable to ALL city residents.
The whole garbage fee and garbage billing fiasco are classic examples of government mismanagement at its best. City leaders should have taken care of the financial mess they created without inventing a new way to take money out of the wallets of the already suffering citizenry. But that's not the way things operate in the City "Taj Mahal" Center or in most any government building.
Instead of being accountable and trying to save money, Mayor Barile and company just increased property taxes, increased sales taxes through a "pick-your-poison" sales tax referendum, put in red light cameras, illegally transferred/loaned money from one fund to the other, and then tacked on a garbage fee for a city service that had always been provided through tax payments until new City Administrator Tony Cox arrived.
Bobby Moore, who writes press releases in the "news"paper for the City of Morrist, oops, who writes "news" for the Citizen Tribune, recently ran a second article on December 2, 2010, trying to explain the City's failure to bill some city residents (those city residents who receive water from Alpha-Talbott, Witt, and Russellville-Whitesburg Utility Districts) while going on and billing others (those city residents who receive water from MUS).
In his most recent opus, Bobby explains that the City has now (November 29) sent garbage fee billing lists to the three surrounding utility districts and has asked the utilities to include Morristown's garbage fee on the utility's water bills.
Bobby adds that the utility districts "could begin collecting Morristown's...$10/month garbage fee at the end of December." Actually, it's the billings that "could" go out in December (or not) but the collection of any money by the utility districts can't take place until January 2011 at the earliest. And even that is not a sure thing.
When Bobby Moore was doing his first CMA (Cover Morristown's rear-end) article on November 18, he reported that the failure to bill all city residents stemmed from "billing difficulties" with the Utility Districts. For some reason, Bobby failed to explain then that actually the City hadn't even sent a billing list to the Utility Districts.
I guess you could term not providing a list of city residents to the utility districts and not authorizing them to include Morristown garbage bills on the utility's water bills a "billing difficulty," but those certainly aren't billing difficulties created by the districts.
On November 24, I pointed out that the "billing difficulties" with the utility districts were that the City had not authorized the utility districts to bill the fee. Click here. Now Bobby reports pretty much the same thing and adds that the City has finally given each utility a list of garbage fee customers and has asked/authorized the utility districts to send out garbage bills.
Now that the City has given the Utility Districts a billing list and the go-ahead to bill, other problems have come out. At least one utility, RV-WB, doesn't have software with the capability of handling yet another billing task for the City of Morristown. [RV-WB already bills its customers for RV-WB water and includes Morristown sewer and Morristown stormwater charges on the bills that go to Morristown residents.]
The RV-WB utility board will meet toward the end of December and vote on Morristown's request that RV-WB include yet another Morristown fee on RV-WB water bills.
Since most customers look at their water bill as a lump sum, adding the $10/month Morristown garbage fee to RV-WB water bills may inadvertently create ill-will toward RV-WB, the billing agent, instead of ill-will toward the real culprit, the City of Morristown.
Watch for that RV-WB vote. Morristown power players will be applying behind-the-scenes pressure on RV-WB to go on and handle the Morristown garbage billings and not rock the boat. We'll see if TPTB can apply enough pressure to get another utility to take flak for Morristown's financial failings and continued lack of accountability.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
November 24, 2010 Morristown Sends Bill for New $10/Month Garbage Fee To Some City Residents But Not To Others
I asked a simple question at the Morristown City Council meeting on November 16.
Short Question: Are some city residents paying the garbage fee while other city residents are not?
Short Answer: Yes.
My question and City Administrator Tony Cox's response were not reported in the "news"paper, but two days later Bob Moore had a front page article trying to provide cover for the fact that the City of Morristown is charging the new $10/month garbage fee to some city residents but not to others.
After this came out on November 16, Moore talked to Asst. City Administrator Buddy Fielder. Fielder apparently said that the city's billing system is 95% complete and added that the City is resolving all MUS-related bills before addressing billing difficulties in the Alpha-Talbott, Witt, and Russellville-Whitesburg utility districts.
For some reason, Moore didn't describe the billing difficulties that the City needs to address in AT, Witt, and RV-WB utility districts. Why?
As soon as Fielder said there were billing difficulties with AT, Witt, and RV-WB, a reporter would ask certain obvious questions especially for a front-page news article: What are the billing difficulties with AT, Witt, and RV-WB? What are you doing to address these difficulties? When will these difficulties be resolved?
But IF Moore had asked the obvious questions, then Fielder's statement about billing difficulties in the Alpha, Witt, or RV-WB utility districts would have unraveled.
There are no current billing difficulties to address with the Alpha, Witt, and RV-WB utility districts. Alpha, Witt, and RV-WB have NOT sent a single bill for the city's garbage fee to city residents in their areas because the City has NOT yet asked or authorized them to add the city's garbage fee to water bills of city residents.
Moore, in my opinion, wrote the article solely or primarily to allow the City to provide front-page "spin" for its actions in billing some residents and not others. To make sure that the City had free rein to "spin" its response, Moore adopted a new journalism standard that could be described as "don't ask (the obvious questions) and don't tell (what's really going on)." Just front-page governmental "spin."
What we have is the City directing MUS to jump in and add the $10/month garbage fee to water bills for city residents in September 2010, but the City did NOT and still has NOT (as of November 16) directed or authorized AT, Witt, or RV-WB to add the $10/month garbage fee to water bills for city residents in September or in October or in November. Why start billing some but not others?
Assistant City Administrator Buddy Fielder said that City residents who weren't billed for September, October, and November won't be charged for past service. "Those were issues on our part, not on their part....I don't think it makes sense to do that."
As a matter of fairness, Fielder is probably right that the City should not go back and try to collect past garbage fees from city residents who didn't receive a garbage fee on their utility bill because of the city's "issues." Especially when the "issue" in this whole thing is that the City didn't even try to bill city residents served by AT, Witt, or RV-WB.
But what do Fielder and City Administrator Tony Cox and Mayor Barile and City Councilmembers think about the flip-side of this mess? What about those city residents who did receive a bill and who did pay the $10/month garbage fee for a service that others didn't pay for? What's fair for them?
Just looking at what's fair and addressing some potential legal problems in this "charge some/don't charge others" situation, the City should stop billing the garbage fee to city residents served by MUS until the city residents served by Alpha, Witt, and RV-WB utility districts have been billed an equal number of months.
After all city residents served by Alpha, Witt, RV-WB utilities have been billed for the same number of months that MUS customers have already been billed for, then billing of city customers thru MUS would resume.
Sadly, this post is about proper billing of a new garbage fee instead of the fee itself. The new garbage fee is the city's poster child for years and years of financial mismanagement and an almost total lack of accountability.
The new garbage fee is nothing more than a way for the Mayor and City Council to take more money from the citizens and use that money for pet projects--like brick pavers on city roads--while providing financial cover for the problems brought about by years of financial mismanagement, sweetheart deals, and illegal money switcheroos.
It's not rocket science. Mayor Sami Barile and City Council wanted more of "other people's money" so they decided to make city residents start paying a separate and new "fee" for garbage pick-up, a service which used to be provided thru property taxes and other city revenues.
[The only person to vote against the new $10/month garbage fee was Councilman Gene Brooks.]
Of course, making the taxpayers shoulder the financial burden created by the Mayor and City Council's years of financial mismanagement, neglect, and lack of accountability is nothing new.
Let's see...property tax increase in 2007, sales tax increase in 2008, red light cameras, sewer increases almost every year, and now a new garbage fee! Next year?
Short Question: Are some city residents paying the garbage fee while other city residents are not?
Short Answer: Yes.
My question and City Administrator Tony Cox's response were not reported in the "news"paper, but two days later Bob Moore had a front page article trying to provide cover for the fact that the City of Morristown is charging the new $10/month garbage fee to some city residents but not to others.
After this came out on November 16, Moore talked to Asst. City Administrator Buddy Fielder. Fielder apparently said that the city's billing system is 95% complete and added that the City is resolving all MUS-related bills before addressing billing difficulties in the Alpha-Talbott, Witt, and Russellville-Whitesburg utility districts.
For some reason, Moore didn't describe the billing difficulties that the City needs to address in AT, Witt, and RV-WB utility districts. Why?
As soon as Fielder said there were billing difficulties with AT, Witt, and RV-WB, a reporter would ask certain obvious questions especially for a front-page news article: What are the billing difficulties with AT, Witt, and RV-WB? What are you doing to address these difficulties? When will these difficulties be resolved?
But IF Moore had asked the obvious questions, then Fielder's statement about billing difficulties in the Alpha, Witt, or RV-WB utility districts would have unraveled.
There are no current billing difficulties to address with the Alpha, Witt, and RV-WB utility districts. Alpha, Witt, and RV-WB have NOT sent a single bill for the city's garbage fee to city residents in their areas because the City has NOT yet asked or authorized them to add the city's garbage fee to water bills of city residents.
Moore, in my opinion, wrote the article solely or primarily to allow the City to provide front-page "spin" for its actions in billing some residents and not others. To make sure that the City had free rein to "spin" its response, Moore adopted a new journalism standard that could be described as "don't ask (the obvious questions) and don't tell (what's really going on)." Just front-page governmental "spin."
What we have is the City directing MUS to jump in and add the $10/month garbage fee to water bills for city residents in September 2010, but the City did NOT and still has NOT (as of November 16) directed or authorized AT, Witt, or RV-WB to add the $10/month garbage fee to water bills for city residents in September or in October or in November. Why start billing some but not others?
Assistant City Administrator Buddy Fielder said that City residents who weren't billed for September, October, and November won't be charged for past service. "Those were issues on our part, not on their part....I don't think it makes sense to do that."
As a matter of fairness, Fielder is probably right that the City should not go back and try to collect past garbage fees from city residents who didn't receive a garbage fee on their utility bill because of the city's "issues." Especially when the "issue" in this whole thing is that the City didn't even try to bill city residents served by AT, Witt, or RV-WB.
But what do Fielder and City Administrator Tony Cox and Mayor Barile and City Councilmembers think about the flip-side of this mess? What about those city residents who did receive a bill and who did pay the $10/month garbage fee for a service that others didn't pay for? What's fair for them?
Just looking at what's fair and addressing some potential legal problems in this "charge some/don't charge others" situation, the City should stop billing the garbage fee to city residents served by MUS until the city residents served by Alpha, Witt, and RV-WB utility districts have been billed an equal number of months.
After all city residents served by Alpha, Witt, RV-WB utilities have been billed for the same number of months that MUS customers have already been billed for, then billing of city customers thru MUS would resume.
Sadly, this post is about proper billing of a new garbage fee instead of the fee itself. The new garbage fee is the city's poster child for years and years of financial mismanagement and an almost total lack of accountability.
The new garbage fee is nothing more than a way for the Mayor and City Council to take more money from the citizens and use that money for pet projects--like brick pavers on city roads--while providing financial cover for the problems brought about by years of financial mismanagement, sweetheart deals, and illegal money switcheroos.
It's not rocket science. Mayor Sami Barile and City Council wanted more of "other people's money" so they decided to make city residents start paying a separate and new "fee" for garbage pick-up, a service which used to be provided thru property taxes and other city revenues.
[The only person to vote against the new $10/month garbage fee was Councilman Gene Brooks.]
Of course, making the taxpayers shoulder the financial burden created by the Mayor and City Council's years of financial mismanagement, neglect, and lack of accountability is nothing new.
Let's see...property tax increase in 2007, sales tax increase in 2008, red light cameras, sewer increases almost every year, and now a new garbage fee! Next year?
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