City of Fernie screw-up
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Submitted by CS86 on Tue, 17/11/2009 - 4:22pm.
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 Joined: 26-11-2008 |
So the City of Fernie underestimated the sewer/water/garbage bill for some 250 residents whom pay their utilities for the whole year up-front, by ONE CENT each. So, being the wise ones they are, they sent out a bill for ONE CENT for all 250 residents by MAIL (at 54 cents for postage each), not to mention the paper and envelope costs and the labor to handle all of this, in order to obtain $2.50. And to top it all off, when people go to pay it, they tell them the reciept is in the mail!! ANOTHER cost. I estimate this total cost for supplies, labor, postage etc. to be over $500 in order to obtain $2.50. I also heard that someone went to City Hall with $2.50 to pay for everyone's bill and the City refused it, saying he couldn't pay everyone's bills. I think the city should be held accountable for this. Any thoughts? |
Joined: 26-10-2006
Is this really true?
Joined: 26-11-2008
I know a lady that actually got one of these bills for one cent.
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Say NO to Flathead Park!
Joined: 15-06-2007
One person complained about this to city council at the Nov 9 council meeting. You can watch the city's response on FernieTV at http://fernietv.com/channel1/CouncilCalendar.html
Joined: 26-11-2008
Thanks. You can watch at the link http://fernietv.com/channel1/council.09.11.09.html and from 3:15 to 13min Mr. Smith talks about this issue. The city seemed to beat around the bush, not admit that money was wasted, and not make any suggestion for resolution.
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Say NO to Flathead Park!
Joined: 17-11-2009
I have two properties in Fernie, and I received two notices for the 1 cent payment for each property, for a grand total of 4 letters. The explanation I got for the second letters is that there was an error in the mailing batch the first time, so the City re-issued the whole batch again the second time.
Hard to believe, but true. As discussed on this site before, is this yet another sign of the death of common sense?!?!
Or worse yet, utter incompetence?!?!
Joined: 26-10-2006
Maybe a bit of both. A private business would look at the situation and come to the conclusion that spending 500x to get x is fiscally irresponsible, and just take the small hit. What is bothering me is that nobody would admit, that it was a mistake to pursue payment in this situation. That is all that had to be done. Thank the electorate for bringing the problem forward, admit that it wasn't very smart and vow to keep similar things from happening in the future. Getting forgiven is much easier if someone just stands up and says "I did it". Smart children figure this out pretty quick.
Joined: 26-11-2008
Exactly. The city should admit their screw-up and ensure it doesn't happen again. But they just keep beating around the bush. And as well, if a business's books won't balance, their accountant can write off the loss. Especially a $2.50 loss. The city has many high-paid accountants, could none of them figure it out? At what price do the taxpayers have to continue to fund the city's screw-ups? I could think of a million ways to spend that money (roads, snow removal, to name a few).
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Say NO to Flathead Park!
Joined: 12-05-2006
Funniest thing I ever heard.
Joined: 11-05-2006
Funny ? well maybe in a wierd sense of the word, INCOMPETENCE I would prefer to call it, this all coming out of a City Hall run by a VERY highly paid administration staff, not the front end staff but the top people, if this is an example of "pay the people at the top highly and you get performance" I shudder to think what decisions they would make if thier salaries were cut.
On top of this, where was the city council ? someone there should have been aware that this was going to happen and put a stop to it.
Joined: 11-05-2006
Well, I just watched the council meeting where this subject was raised by a long time city taxpayer, a couple of comments, firstly this person was right to complain, he was told that could have been caused by mid year increases or by calculator/computer errors, if any bill increase after it has been paid supposedly in full then in my opinion you should not have to pay that increase, thats like buying a car, driving away then 2 months later have the dealer saying costs went up so you owe me more money ! also, I have never known this to happen as the citizen stated also.
Secondly, I was amazed to see Mr Chabot's reaction, he seemed to find the whole situation mildly amusing, to say the least and also tried to justify the cost of envelope stuffing by the fact that the city has a machine to do that so "we have to use it".
The Mayor also admitted that she received one of these 1c bills, so why was this not looked into right away.Government at any level it seems just cannot help but waste taxpayers money, commonsense goes out of the window when senior staff and politicians go in the door.