Every month or so, when it becomes time to pay his bills, Tom
Brazier spends his early morning eating breakfast and methodically
going through his stack of bills. He usually has a good idea how
big of a dent each bill will put into his bank account, but Tuesday
morning he received one that he hopes to forget some day.
Every month or so, when it becomes time to pay his bills, Tom Brazier spends his early morning eating breakfast and methodically going through his stack of bills.
He usually has a good idea how big of a dent each bill will put into his bank account, but Tuesday morning he received one that he hopes to forget some day. Opening his water bill from the City of Hollister for his house, Brazier was struck with more digits on a bill than he has ever seen.
“I opened it up, and it was $31,869.83,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
The bill was an extraordinary increase from his normal billing amount – an average of $100. His usage was a towering 6.5 million gallons.
“I think I would have noticed that,” he said.
The city promptly fixed the issue, but Brazier called into question how the mistake could have happened to begin with.
“How does something like this even get sent out?” Brazier said to the Free Lance.
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Hollister Administrative Services Director Robert Galvan explained that it never has happened before on his watch. Usually, he said, the normal checks and balances in the finance office result in catching such an error before it is mailed.
“In my six years here, this has never happened,” Galvan said. “We usually catch something like this.”
The error occurred after the city replaced an old meter near Brazier’s home by Target, Galvan said. After the meter was swapped for a new one, it wasn’t reconfigured to read the water flow in the area – resulting in the abnormal water read.
“It’s a tiny issue that we usually catch before the bills are sent out,” Galvan said. “The (water) readers would catch it, and we would fix it.”
To try to prevent a similar mistake from happening again, Galvan has established an extra round of reviewing of the readers and the bills, he said.
“We will check it more than once, more than twice,” he said. “We will triple-check the abnormal reports.”
Galvan said the city would work hard to prevent a similar mistake from happening again, he said.
“I’ll take full responsibility, but this will never happen again,” he said.
Brazier was just glad he wasn’t held responsible to pay for the large bill of water he didn’t use, he said.
“I don’t have that much money to pay a bill of that size,” he said. “I just want to go home and pour myself a brew and forget this ever happened.”
