At the regular Greenville city council meeting on Tuesday, March 5, The Publisher of the Delta Democrat-Times Jon Alverson came before the council with Brad Hathaway, the DD-T’s lawyer to contest a $75,000 water bill.
Hathaway told the council that the DD-T stopped getting their $160.99 bill in July of 2023, August through November no bills came and no payments were made, until December of 2023 when a bill finally arrived totaling $75,444.52.
Hathaway referencing a bill from March said, “Out on Broadway there was a bad leak that was flooding the DD-T’s water meter, so no meter reading took place.”
Councilman Vernon Greenlee said He wasn’t an engineer, but he did have a lot of common sense and if there were a leak this bad, there would have been a lake somewhere.
Hathaway again referring to the March 2023 bill said, “There was a lake, but it wasn’t our water.
In the comments section of the March bill, it says, ‘Bad leak on the main line running back into the meter.’ We have no way of knowing if this was the first acknowledgment of the leak because my request for a year's worth of bills only yielded bills between March and July and then the December bill.”
Hathaway went on through the bills between March and July when the bills stopped.
“April had a reading that wasn’t tied to the DD-T because the meter could not be read, May no effort was made to read the meter, June and July you see the same systemic problem,” Hathaway said, “If you look at the comment on the July bill a description of the problem has been written there as a leak on the city side.”
Hathaway wanted the Publisher of the DD-T to describe the hardship a bill of this size has caused and will cause to a commercial pillar of this community.
Alverson, after listing the circumstances leading up to the $75,000 bill, said, “I would hope that one of our subscribers that lived in the same ward for 64 years, as we have and has paid their water bill diligently for those years, as we have, would be afforded the leniency we know is available,” Alverson said, “I ask for graciousness from the city council, knowing that the amount owed on this account, through no fault of our own, is devastating to the future operations of one of the pillar businesses in this city.”
He finished by telling the Council that the DD-T had been in business longer than the water department.
Councilman James Wilson said he knew the city was at fault and recommended that the next time a meter couldn’t be read because of a leak, especially one of this size, the water should be cut off immediately and repaired.
Councilman Dr. Bill Brozovich said, “I agree with Councilman Wilson that we dropped the ball on this.”
Mayor Errick Simmons asked Hathaway what the DD-T was requesting from the council.
Hathaway said he thought an amount equaling ten times the normal bill, or a total of one year’s worth of bills was fair.
Kimberly Merchant the city’s attorney told the council it does have the authority to make adjustments to the outstanding bill.
The dispute ended when the council agreed to accept $2,039.88, an amount Alverson said I can live with.
