This story is getting strange.
Last week, as I reported earlier, I got two water bills from the city’s water department: one for $130, about a normal bill for this time of year, and then another marked “corrected bill,” for $87. The larger bill was completely unitemized: number of gallons consumed: 0; units billed, 0. If both of these held water (heh!), my total July water bill would be reach an all-time high of $217.
Figuring this had something to do with the recent snafu in which someone canceled my water service and restarted it in their name, I called the water department to inquire. After an especially annoying and noisy phone tree maze runaround, I finally got to a customer service rep.
She pointed out that the date on the $130.14 bill was 2008, and the account number ends in -09; the $87 bill is dated 2009 and ends in -11. To fix the mess that occurred when the chucklehead canceled my water service, they had to create a new account for me, the one ending in -11. The other bill was something the department emitted as part of the process of zeroing out the defunct -09 account. It was, she said, a duplicate of the July 2008 statement. The corrected bill of $87.34 is what I owe this month.
I said it didn’t seem likely that a bill spanning the hottest and thirstiest part of the year would be $87. Though I’m happy to get a wintertime bill in the middle of one of the hottest summers on record, I really don’t want to cheat the City. She assured me that was what I owed.
Ohhh-kayyyy….
The only explanation for this—other than the obvious one, that the City made a mistake—is that last winter I turned off most of the watering system and since then have been watering nonxeric plants by hand. That’s one of the reasons for yesterday’s rant about the unholy amount of work around this house: hose drags are not my favorite form of entertainment. But the June bill was $109; it covered much of May, when the weather was much cooler. It’s mighty unlikely that the bill dropped $22 when temps rose to 115, every plant in a pot had to be watered every day, and 10 roses in the ground had to be deep-watered twice a week.
To add to the silliness, the July 2008 water bill was not $130.14; it was $128.72.
So, much as I’d like to imagine I’ve found a way to cut the water bills, I doubt it. I think the City screwed up. Whaddaya bet this isn’t the last we hear of it?