Letter to the Editor:
Thursday, March 9th, as I sat in the Kidder Alderman Meeting, I was once again SHOCKED at just how stupid the feud is the city is having with the City Water Board. When Richard Evans, casually told Wastewater Manager Melvin McFee that we need two more waste water cutoffs put in for non-payment of sewer at $300 plus each and no one on the board said anything, I was not surprised. In the City of Kidder, the City Council is more than happy to spend THOUSANDS EVER YEAR in shut off valves, code enforcement wages, mileage, and court fees, than spend $2.50 per household to be able to cut off service for past due bills with a phone call.
Don't worry it gets worse, your sewer bill is based off the last reading the city got in 2013 and according to Richard Evans, that was about two years ago. Just so you know if you have moved to or around Kidder in the last three years and you get a sewer bill, it is based on whoever lived there prior because the city has no idea how much you use.
There is one house in Kidder that has had the water cut off to it for OVER A YEAR. The city had put in a sewer cutoff, because they OWE the city a year of sewer usage for a house with NO WATER. The city has not been able to contact the owners in any way in this entire time. The City had taken them to court. The owners, who no one has ever contacted, did not show yet the City is going to go back and demand arrest warrants for the owners of a house with no water, to pay for a sewer cutoff that they waited a year after the water was turned off to collect and a made up sewer bill based on NOTHING, except maybe the possibility the owners no one can find might have carried thousands of gallons of water in the house just to flush it away.
The Mayor wants to get this fixed and to stop the stupid. On the 21st of March, 2017, at 6:30 p.m., the Major will make another attempted to get things worked out with the water board. The members of the city council have been invited as well as the people of Kidder to come and support getting this fixed!
Just because meter readings are part of the cost of the water bill each month that does not mean the city should get them for free. Many in the city pay to get the paper too, does the City demand its free paper because I already bought one?
G. Robert Bauer II
Kidder
