Consultant eyes water-bill woes

Tuesday, February 29, 2000 By Ron Fonger

JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

FLINT The City Council agreed Monday to pay a consultant more than $37,000 to help fix Flint's water billing system after aides to Mayor Woodrow Stanley said the only alternative was spending more than $1 million to replace the existing program. Council members - under fire from taxpayers who have received late, estimated and inaccurate bills for months - said they would free up an additional $75,000 if it appears the consultant is making progress and more time is needed to finish the job.

"To be truthful, I don't want to spend another dime," said Council President Ed Taylor, who nonetheless voted to parcel out one-third of the $112,725 request in an effort to see if Pennsylvania-based SCT can successfully marry

Flint's new water meter-reading system with its billing software.

SCT developed the software package sold to the city by Teldata Inc. for nearly $750,000.

City officials hope SCT can diagnose a problem within three weeks, and City Administrator David H. Ready said the plan is the only potential solution to the water-billing problems.

"No one is more interested than the mayor in getting this resolved. This is our best effort," Ready said. "We might have to hold our nose and go forward. ... Otherwise, we don't have a solution at this time."

Eighth Ward Councilman Lawrence B. Murphy said he doesn't know what to tell residents who continue to complain of inaccurate bills.

Lines in the customer service area of City Hall stretched near the lobby Monday and officials said city employees are under heavy stress as they deal with complaints.

"We (seem to be) in a predicament we can't get out of," Murphy said.

http://aa.mlive.com/news/index.ssf?/news/stories/20000229ffltwater.frm

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 29, 2000

Answers

They've had 3 days to work on it. Why
can't they fix it? :-'

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), February 29, 2000.