Huntingdon Hears Complaint About Water Billing, Approves Officers’ Take-Home Patrol Cars

HUNTINGDON (September 24) — The Huntingdon Mayor and Council approved a policy to allow certified police officers to drive their patrol cars home when not on duty. That approval came during the September 24 meeting of the Council.

The policy permits the car to be driven within 25 miles and only certified officers. Many area police departments added such a policy to attract officers to the force.

In other business, Allison Williams, a resident of Huntingdon, complained about her water bill. Personnel of the Water Department estimated her monthly billing instead of actually reading the meter. The actual usage was then charged on a subsequent monthly bill, which created a much higher bill.

Williams said that the employees simply recorded ‘false amounts’ instead of actually reading the meter. She noted that she addressed the issue before the Council in April and felt her ‘integrity was questioned by saying things that were not true.’

Some citizens received billing adjustments. Those adjustments were not in line with the city’s adjustment policy.

“Moving through the proper channels of speaking in person about a grievance and then to the Council, while not seeing progress in ethics nor the acknowledgement of the code, I filed a complaint with the Tennessee Board of Utility Regulation.”

She and Mayor Nina Smothers and City Recorder Kim Carter appeared before the board.

Williams quoted two of the TBUR’s board members, who stated the city failed to read the meter and then assessed the difference on a future bill. Board Member Pelham said the meter readers did not do their job...It’s failure and negligence on staff. That member said if they follow the city’s policy, there would have been a correct adjustment.

Assistant Director of the Comptroller Ross Colona said, “Whenever you have misreading due to poor management, we look at the utility’s best practice, and that is the city’s ownness for the utility fix.” He said the TBUR should write a letter to the town of Huntingdon to look back into the matter and see if there can be a different resolution based on the policy.

Williams said a few descriptives regarding the town of Huntingdon were ‘fraudulent, poor management, and failure and negligence.

Williams said the hearing was held on July 18, and she has yet to hear anything publicly. In March, there were 90 water bill adjustments, and in April, there were 81. How many of these were overread or underread, and how were the adjustments determined?

Mayor Smothers said the Tennessee Board of Utility Regulation did not give a clear directive from the meeting.

Councilpersons Andrew Maddox and Kelly Eubanks expressed their concern that they were unaware of the hearing until recently.

Soon, the manually-read water meters will be replaced with all digital meters that automatically report the water usage without human meter readers.

Shawna Smith addressed the Council about adding a regulation pickleball court in Veterans Park. A group called Huntingdon Picklers is ready to work with the city to add four to six pickleball courts on one of the former tennis courts in the park. The current surface would have to be evaluated to determine if it can be repaired.

The group, consisting of Brian Strop, Elizabeth Cope, Jordan Allen, Shawna Smith, Cade Wood, and Tiffany Dunbar, offered to work with the city to create regulation pickleball courts.