Still Leaking; Maintenance Does Mean Ownership; Judge Deals the Cards; Artistic For All; Real Scary Road Rage.

RVA 5x5 - August 18, 2023

No algorithms. No content filters. Honest and insightful analysis from Richmond, VA.

This week check out our five stories on:

• The city is still billing people for water months and even years after they move out and no one can seem to fix it.

• A look at how the city’s winning argument in their lawsuit over the AP Hill statue is now going to cost us $5 million to buy the Ashe Center from the School Board.

• The legal arguments in the lastest casino lawsuit were filed today and all the cards are now in the hands of the judge who will decide next week whether or not the city’s rubber-stamp of the casino operator is legit.

• Scary stories about road rage are all over the news from all over the region and are worrying.

• A great editorial challenging RPS if they are to have a High School for the Arts, then they should really make it a real one and open for all students and make it a launch pad for creativity and inspiration.

STORY #1 — Still Leaking
It has been a while since the last story about the city’s Department of Public Utilities (DPU) backlog has been run, so here is an update on the progress (and lack thereof) from Tyler Lane at CBS6.

You might recall a scathing audit at the beginning of the year found that DPU was using estimated charges on almost 15% of the roughly 28,000 monthly customer bills, resulting in wildly varying charges to customers, some reaching into the thousands of dollars supposedly owed. So in June, DPU began limiting customer call center hours one day per week to reduce the backlog and the good news is it has shown improvement, resolving 2,800 outstanding issues and the number of estimated bills is now down by half to 7.5%.

Yet there remains a lot of work to do. The bad news is there are still lots more outstanding and unresolved customer service issues, according to a FOIA submitted by CBS6. And there are still 5,213 water meters needed to be fixed out of 69,838 meters total. By the numbers:

• 3,349 customers are waiting for a water leak adjustment

• 2,116 customers are still waiting for service to either start or stop at their new address

• 1,130 customers have an outstanding billing request

• Eight pending water leak adjustment requests date back to 2020, while 2,056 requests remain pending in 2023

• Seven outstanding requests for services to be started or stopped date back to 2021, while 1,537 remain pending in 2023

The story spoke with some customers still waiting after months or years to get their issue resolved as has been reported previously. One couple that moved to Chesterfield in July 2022 are still receiving bills charging them $1,077 even after trying to have their account closed multiple times ever since they moved. Earlier this month they received a “final bill” that was being prepared to be sent to collections if they did not pay $800 immediately. They are among many customers that have continued to reach out to CBS6 because they saw the stories about the outstanding bills and unresolved issues like those listed above.

Out of the list above, the most astonishing is that the city can’t seem to figure out how to close out accounts and stop billing people for months and years after they can prove that they moved. As the customer in the story points out, “You can do things with the touch of a button, and that's what I'm not understanding. Thirteen months is one heck of a backlog."