Urban Warrior: 48G water bill has Mary upset

MARY GAY'S water bill for the rowhouse she owns in West Oak Lane just topped out at more than $48,000.

For a 69-year-old retiree on a fixed income of Social Security payments, it might as well be $1 million. There's no way she can pay the bill. And, as Gay has proven for more than a decade, she has no plans to pay it.

Gay, who lives about a mile away from the rowhouse, rented it to a couple of women until crime in the neighborhood scared them away in the mid-1990s.

"The boys had started selling drugs on the corner," Gay said. "They would just take over the porch. The girls couldn't get in. They finally moved out."

Gay says she called the city Water Department and asked for the water to be turned off since the house was vacant.

The Water Department tells another story, saying its records don't show Gay asking for the water service to be turned off.

To discontinue water service in the city, a property owner must obtain a disconnection permit. Gay says she never got the permit and didn't think she needed one. She insists a guy in a Water Department truck came out and turned off the water.

But the bills kept coming and piling up. Gay said she called the Water Department to complain again and again, asking why she was being billed for water when the service had been turned off.

The house sat vacant for about a decade when things in the neighborhood started to change. Police shot and killed an alleged drug dealer on the corner.

"The drug dealers had moved," Gay explained. "They didn't hang around there anymore."

Then a real estate speculator expressed interest in buying the house. Gay had the water turned back on to show that the pipes were in good working order.

The deal fell through, so Gay rented the house to a woman she knew from church.

With the bill now well above $40,000, the Water Department started sending Gay letters threatening to shut off the service. It did just that on March 14.

"I can't pay what I don't owe," Gay exclaimed. "It's not right to make me pay it."

Gay appealed the bill to the city's Tax Review Board. That case is still pending.

Ed Grusheski, a spokesman for the Water Department, said the bills for Gay's property seemed "inordinately high" for its size and wondered if she had a leak.

Gay says she's never seen evidence of a leak in the house.

Water Revenue Bureau Chief Marleen Duley ordered a full review of Gay's account last week.

Duley offers a plausible explanation for what went wrong.

First, Gay didn't get the disconnection permit to cancel water service to the house. Then she didn't have a new automated meter installed there so her bills were based on estimated usage.

As a result, Gay's bill is likely inflated by overestimation.

"There will be an adjustment and she doesn't owe us the $48,000," Duley said last week. "But it's not that she doesn't owe us anything because she hasn't been paying for 10 years."

Gay may have to pay monthly service charges, now about $20, stretching back a decade. That could be steep but far less than her current $48,000 balance.

This may be a good place to point out that the Water Department could do a better job of telling customers about the need for disconnection permits.

The Water Department told me the permits are issued by the Department of Licenses & Inspections. L&I told me the permits are handled by the Water Department. So you can see how Gay could have been confused.

Duley has put one of her staffers on Gay's bill, which includes digging up records so old they're on microfiche. The staffer called Gay Friday morning to get started on compiling an accurate bill. *

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