sound familiar?

Chesterfield woman's water bill tops nearly $1,500: 'There's no way'  

this is what happens when one has to deal with an arrogant water works monopoly.

roll the dice!

public domain

PIDS

do you know what's wrong with government? for the answer you don't need to go further than George Washington, our first president, and see what he said about political parties. George Washington's Farewell Address Included Three Main Warnings - HISTORY  

Our first president was right. "When Americans voted according to party loyalty, rather than the common interest of the nation, Washington feared it would foster a 'spirit of revenge,' and enable the rise of 'cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men' who would 'usurp for themselves the reins of government.'" 

We see examples of the destructive influence of political parties at all levels of government: federal, state, district, county and town. Government has become a place where partisan political ideologues debate their party's ideology instead of doing the peoples' business. Governments become Political Ideology Debating Societies (PIDS). Nothing gets done--instead they play the blame game.

There's no better example of PIDS than right here in strasburg where town council failed to pass a unity resolution after Paul Rush's home was vandalized twice within the span of a few weeks. Strasburg Town Council Rejects Unity Resolution | News | dnronline.com 

therefore, I call upon the town's citizens to:

• reject those on town council who use their position to "climb the ladder" in their political party.
• prior to November's election, educate yourself. find out who's running for council and if they're a politician or someone who is truly interested in making the town better.
• consider running yourself, if your total motivation is to make strasburg better for it's current and future citizens.
• VOTE  

It's time to take our town back from the political ideologues and elect representatives who are laser focused on improving the town of strasburg for its citizens.

sweet deal

Former Strasburg mayor enters plea deal in DUI, food stamp case | Nvdaily | nvdaily.com  

are you surprised? 

score another failure in transparency. 

analogy

Imagine that you go to your friendly neighborhood gas station to get gas. You put your credit card in the pump, it's approved and you pump your gas. You press the button for a receipt and out it comes. it's for $862.45. You look at the quantity of gas and it's 198.35 gallons. What would you do?

if it was me, then I would go in and show the receipt to Joe, the manager. Suppose Joe looked at it and said: "You paid for 198.35 gallons, so you must have pumped 198.35 gallons." 

"But, Joe," you say "my car only has a 20 gallon capacity." 

Joe repeats "You paid for 198.35 gallons. You must have pumped 198.35 gallons."

What would you do? maybe call your credit card company and stop payment on the $862.45? that's probably what I'd do. 

so, how is that different from the St. Paul Lutheran Church and Child Care Center, which has received several water bills that are several times more than their normal monthly water bills? Each time the child care center tells the town that nothing changed (except for the fact that the number of children is less due to covid). Each time the town insists that the high water bills are caused by leaky toilets. Strasburg residents continue to see unusually high water bills 

months go by. the high water bills keep coming. the town continues to insist that it's leaky toilets that are causing the high water bills. Some in Strasburg continue to see high water bills, changes coming 

what would you do? if it was me, then, needless to say, I'd stop doing business with Joe. unfortunately, the child care center doesn't have a choice. the town has a monopoly on water--and, with the town's arrogance, it shows. 

utility bill wild goose chase

if you're like me, then you probably haven't ever looked deeply into your town utility bill. you just pay it each month and move on. but, with the stories from WHSV about high water bills, I decided to look into our monthly utility bill. 

The bill itself contains charges for water, sewer and garbage, meter number, previous and present meter readings (90 and 92--fictitious numbers), usage (2000--another fictitious number) and amount ($25.57 for water, $25.02 for sewer and $12.13 for garbage). There are several dates on the bill:

• billing date (02/28/2022) (appears twice)
• due date (03/20/2022) (appears twice)
• previous reading date (02/17/2022) (same as present reading date)
• present reading date (02/17/2022) (same as previous reading date)

does the same date for previous and present readings make any sense to you?

There's a message in red on the bill that reads "FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE REFERENCE THE UTILITY BILL ADJUSTMENT & WATER METER POLICY". since said policy wasn't on the bill, I went to the town's website and typed "utility bill adjustment & water meter policy" into the search block. "Invalid search" was the response. 

I then clicked on "Public Works + Utilities" under the "inside town hall" heading on the town's home page. Then I clicked on the "water and sewer rate information" block. under the "water and wastewater rate survey" heading it states: "Please see the Water and Wastewater Rate Survey prepared by Draper Aden Associates to see how Strasburg rates compare with other localities across Virginia: HERE ." The link took me to Draper Aden Associates' webpage where I requested the 2021 and 2020 Water and Waste Water reports. Each report has multiple pages of "water data" for numerous towns in Virginia--except Strasburg. ????

at this point I'm thinking that I'm on a wild goose chase--but, I continued on. 

At the bottom of the "water and sewer rate information" web page there are two hotlinks: "Water and Wastewater Rate Report" and "water bill unit calculator". when I clicked on the first I got Draper Aden Associates' 2019 report. if you're interested in out-of-date information, then you can download this report. You can click on the second hotlink too. I did--quite frankly, it raises more questions than it answers. 

• what is a "billing unit"? (answer: a fictitious number)
• why not compute the bill using actual meter readings? 
• why not show actual gallons used (present meter reading minus previous meter reading), rather than converting and rounding them into fictitious "billing units"?
• why does my utility bill show only two fictitious two-digit numbers for the meter readings? (meter readings in the sample "water bill unit calculator" chart show 6 digits--3 whole numbers and 3 digits after the decimal point.) 

and then there are questions about the dates:

• same date for both previous and present readings? needless to say, we didn't use 2,000 gallons (a fictitious number) of water in a single day!
• when was the previous meter reading (90, another fictitious number) actually read?
• when was the present meter reading (92, another fictitious number) actually read?
• what were the actual meter readings in decimals? 
• why aren't actual meter readings in decimals shown on the bill (like those shown in the "water bill unit calculator")?
• why aren't the actual gallons used shown on the bill?

by this time my head hurt with all of the errors, fictitious numbers, misinformation, contradictions, obfuscations and dead ends. 

all in all, trying to figure out our water bill was a complete waste of time--a wild goose chase. 

can you imagine doing business with a gas station that rounded up the amount of gas pumped to the next even gallon instead of showing the actual number of gallons of gas pumped in decimals? 

neither can I. strasburg's water bills don't pass the "smell test".

public domain