Clerk-treasurer walks out of Fillmore meeting amid utility complaints
FILLMORE -- After utility complaints from a non-resident, a resident and council member Robin Duncan, Clerk-Treasurer Tom Gilson walked out of the Fillmore Town Council’s regular meeting Thursday night.
He later said he did not intend to resign.
With 51 residents having past-due balances on utilities, Gilson sent out a letter dated May 18: “According to Town of Fillmore Ordinance 2016-1 we are authorized to disconnect your water and/or place a lien on your property for non-payment.
“We do not desire to do this and are willing to work with you concerning the debt .... If neither full payment nor payment agreement are reached before May 30, 2017 water service will be terminated on this date. If customer carries only sewer service then a lien will be placed on the property.”
Most of the 51 residents who received the letter either paid the balance or arranged payment agreements, bringing the total number of residents on payment agreements to 23.
But eight of the residents did not respond and their water was shut off. The grandmother of one of these residents, having spoken with Gilson that morning, also voiced her concerns at the meeting.
“Last night she came home after working so hard all day, and she said, ‘Grams, my water is gone. It’s off. There’s nothing there.’ No notice,” the woman told the council and Gilson.
“She showed me her bill. Her bill only had a blue line across what she had in arrears all this winter. Couldn’t he have left a note on her door saying, ‘You know, we’ve got to talk. We’ve got to talk. Please call me?’ She’s just right down the street.”
The issues with this particular account go back several months.
“This winter, somehow there was a leak that nobody could detect,” the grandmother said. “It ate up her water bill to the tune of 9,000 (gallons). And nobody came out there to investigate. All she got was a phone call that said, ‘It’s something in your house. You’ve got to check it.’ That’s all she got and it made me red raging mad that nobody came out there to tell her. My husband went in there. He had to search every nook and cranny pipe. A tiny little leak was in that house. And he found it and fixed it.”
After a heated exchange over the issue, Gilson left the building.
Utility Director Joe Cash told the resident after the meeting that he had gone out to check, and Gilson later verified that the checking procedure is policy and that Cash is not responsible for finding leaks in residents’ houses.
In an interview after the meeting, Gilson said that the resident did not fix the leak for two months and had paid off the resulting balance in April, but had not made a payment since.
The complaints did not just come from the audience.
“The grace period is from the 20th to the 5th,” Duncan said. “Why is it not from the 5th to the 20th? But you still get the late charge, so it’s not a grace period. It’s not a long time and there needs to be a grace period.”
Gilson told the Banner Graphic that all bills go out on the 20th of every month and are due on the 5th (15 days) and late fees begin on the 6th.
Town Attorney Jeff Boggess said in another interview that state law mandates residents must be notified in writing and be allowed to continue using utilities for 30 days before they can be shut off, bringing the total number of days between an overdue bill and shut off to 45 days.
The law does not mandate that residents be given a grace period.
Additional utility issues were on residents’ minds on Thursday.
After discussing a private issue, a different resident in the audience thanked the town council.
“Thank you town board, Joe Cash, Tom, for fixing my water bill,” the resident, whose meter had been mistakenly read and her money refunded, said. “But -- I thank everybody, but there’s going to be a ‘but’ in here -- on that water bill issue.... maybe try to help them out a little bit, work with them to get it paid.”
President Curt Leonard responded, “We do. We work with people all the time. We came in here on Saturday and worked with a person. What else do you want us to do? You know, I can’t pay their water bill for them.”
Currently, town ordinances allow residents to arrange payment agreements going out to three months without the council’s approval. Residents requiring payment agreements lasting longer than three months must get specific approval from the town council.
Another resident asked why the town could not have its own system, rather than purchase water from Greencastle.
“When the (former town council) put our water in, they decided that they wanted it to be Greencastle water instead of sinking our own wells,” President Leonard said. “Now to do it -- we’ve checked into it since -- it was going to be another big bond to get and that would take longer to pay back. We just can’t afford it.”
After a meeting with Mary Hoover from the USDA Rural Community Assistance Program in March, town officials discovered that the town holds bonds from 1992 totaling more than $800,000. The amount would have been $127,000 less if the town had not defaulted on these bonds. The payments are set to go out until 2029.
To pay for the bonds, the minimum utility bill received by any resident is $82.67. Based on a 2012 study by the former town council that applied for the bonds, this rate is set to increase by $2.38 by December of this year.
Gilson later said most residents’ bills are between $95.32 and $148.03.
Currently, past-due utility bills total more than $46,000.
Although Thursday’s meeting ended poorly, Gilson told the Banner Graphic he has no intention of leaving his post.
“Am I going to whine and cry and quit? No,” Gilson said.