State of shock

Tuesday, 3:21 pm

By Kate

Oct

28

2008

I received an interim water bill from my city today. It says I owe $1243.98. It took me a little while to stop hyperventilating. I called the city to find out what this is all about and I’m not too pleased with the explanation.

Last winter, the city had bright shiny new meters installed in all our houses. They emit radio signals so that the town can collect the readings without going to individual houses. Seemed like a great idea, but we should probably know that great ideas seem to come with a cost.

The town sent meter readers around in May to read the old meters to compare those readings with the new meters. Their determination was that the old meters were under-reading the actual water usage. So, they decided that they would go back to 1997 and recalculate everyone’s bills, to the present, based on these under-usage findings and charge us for the difference.

Isn’t that fabulous?

My new water bill should arrive in another week. It will be higher than I’ve been accustomed to. So I can add that to the interim bill which means I’m probably in hock to the water department to the tune of about $1500. Isn’t that even more fabulous? I’m so thrilled, I can hardly breathe.

I guess it’s a good thing I started cutting my usage back last year. The way I feel right now, I’m almost ready to dig my own damned well. And get a composting toilet.

If there is a bright side, I suppose I could be thankful that I don’t have a couple of kids, a spouse, or three bathrooms. The woman at city hall said I should feel somewhat fortunate—there are a number of households who were dinged in excess of $15,000. Can you imagine???