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The city of Houston is poised to, finally, make concrete changes to its water-billing ordinances, answering a plea from frustrated and overbilled residents who have become outraged by an increasing number of five-digit bills issued across the city.
The changes proposed by Mayor Sylvester Turner, which my colleague Matt Sledge outlined earlier this week, include removing the limit on the number of times a resident can contest a water bill in a year and formalizing a statute of limitations on how long the department can wait to back-bill customers for incorrect charges. And I’d be remiss if I did not begin this column by saying the nine changes outlined by Turner, which are likely to be approved by city council next week, are a great start.
I’d be further remiss if I did not continue by saying Houstonian residents need more than what’s being offered by the proposal, which the mayor brought forth only hours after a slate of three city council members – newly empowered by November’s passage of Proposition A – pitched their own ordinance changes.
Specifically, Houston residents deserve wholesale changes in the maddeningly opaque appeal process, which can stretch out for several months without feedback from the city. That process begins with a call to the department, and can escalate through administrative reviews, administrative hearings, and – for a small number of Houstonians who refuse to give up – end in a decision from the water adjustment board. Turner’s current package doesn’t include any reforms in this part of the process; rather, he says his proposed changes will reduce the need for appeals in the first place.
I would love to wholeheartedly agree with Turner that a smoothly-run system will eliminate the need for more safeguards on the back end. And yes, I think he’s right that his changes will drastically reduce the number of calls the water department receives, from its current rate of 43,000 each month. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over these past several months of digging into water bills, it’s that there’s a sort of Murphy’s Law that applies to them. Everything that can go wrong, often does.
This spring, I wrote about Bev Edelman, a Houston resident who received a $6,937.31 water bill from the city of Houston. Edelman appealed, using both the “Unusually Large Bill Application” and the “Exceptional Circumstances Adjustment Application.”
But her complaints went unanswered by the city – until I began peppering the water department with questions. Less than two hours after the department received a list of questions from me, a water department representative called Edelman. Within days, $5,000 of her erroneous charges were cleared.
It was a happy ending for Edelman, but one that provided a moment of clarity amid an opaque process: The city’s water bill appeal processes need to be re-engineered to make it easier to contest sky-high bills like Edelman received.
Months later, it’s clear that still hasn’t happened. In October, I wrote about James Davenport, a man who lives across the city from Edelman, but whose experience contesting a five-digit water bill was maddeningly familiar. Even though his water bill contained printed errors on it, he was unable to reach a resolution through the two appeal forms that had worked for Edelman. He took his case to an administrative hearing, where he was denied; last week he emailed me to say that he lost the final round of appeal the city makes available to residents – a review by the water adjustment board – without even being able to attend the board’s meeting in person.
My husband is a rocket scientist at Johnson Space Center, and he focuses on engineering protocols and hardware that – at their root – are designed to keep astronauts safe in space. He often talks about the need for “two-fault tolerance.” That means that when one thing fails, you have a back-up system to ensure that failure does not result in a complete disaster.
You don’t need to work with literal astronauts to see the benefits of such a system. If a fire starts, for instance, you probably want to have a fire extinguisher. If all’s good with that extinguisher, you can make it through that particular crisis with just one fault: The fire.
Turner’s proposal is a one-fault solution. “Sure,” the city seems to be saying, “Your water bill is high, but we’ve done so much work to fix the front end that the back end surely won’t be an issue for you.”
It feels a lot like, “You don’t smoke in your house, and you don’t light candles, so don’t concern yourself with worrying about whether that fire extinguisher works. You shouldn’t need it.”
I want to know that the extinguisher works. Just like I want to know that the appeals process is set up to resolve customer complaints. And frankly, Mayor Turner, I do not feel that way at the moment.
I know that water bills are – to use a cliche that I certainly overuse at home – not rocket science. They’re not even the swelling kitchen inferno I laid out as a parallel example. Truly, I do know that. But I also know that being hit with a nearly $7,000 bill, like Edelman was, or multiple $1,000+ bills like Davenport was, can literally destroy many Houstonians’ lives. According to the Kinder Houston Area Survey, 43 percent of Houstonians would be unable to come up with $400 in an emergency.
Imagine having to decide: Do I pay my water bill, or buy food?
That seems like a situation that needs a two-fault tolerance, doesn’t it?
I am happy to see the city rewriting ordinances that place an undue burden on Houston residents. Just this Monday, for instance, I met Haroen Calehr, a Abdelraoufsinno reader, at a nearby coffee shop to examine his $1,068.99 water bill. He lamented his recent denial for an “unusually high bill” application after a $600 bill this summer. It was too bad, we both said, that Calehr could only apply for one such adjustment per year, leaving him with few options to fix this second surprisingly high bill. Turner’s fixes remove that cap, which means Calehr should be able to submit a second adjustment request.
That in itself is a huge improvement, especially given that all of the residents whose water bills I’ve pored over seem to have recurring issues.
But in a city that issues an average of 3,800 inaccurate water bills per month, where countless residents surely give up on their appeals early in the process due to bureaucratic red tape or hours on hold, attention must be paid to the ways this part of the process can be massaged, or even rewritten.
Perhaps Davenport could have been allowed to bring forth new evidence he discovered after his original contest, which could very likely have swayed the review board’s decision. Calehr could have been provided a reason why his “unusually high bill” appeal was denied, so he knew whether it was worth further appeals. Edelman could have been put in contact with a particular human within the customer service department who could have kept her informed of the status of her appeal, instead of waiting 90 silent days to learn whether anyone was even listening.
I hope our newly empowered city council members see these proposed improvements for what they are: A fire extinguisher, designed to blunt frontline danger. Then I hope they think of residents like Davenport, Calehr and Edelman, and consider how to further arm them with stronger solutions.
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