By CHARLES RICHARDS
eParisExtra!
City manager John Godwin said the Paris City Council will hear the concern by Roger and Sharon Stripland of 3420 Clement Road that they should get a break from the city on their monthly sewer charges.
city manager John Godwin
Originally, it was to be heard Monday night, but Godwin said Friday that the agenda item is being pushed back until probably July 23, when the full council can be present.
Mayor AJ Hashmi is out of the city and won’t be at Monday’s council meeting.
For several months, the city has been trying to solve flooding problems of the Striplands, a close neighbor to District 4 councilman Dr. Richard Grossnickle. The Striplands have the first house on Clement Road after 34th Street bends east toward the Brownwood Addition on its way to FM 195.
Mayor AJ Hashmi expressed concern after the flooding problems persisted month after month, saying Stripland is a taxpayer and deserves to have the problem fixed.
But this is about a different matter.
Attorney Bill Flanary appeared on the Striplands’ behalf during citizens’ input at the June 11 meeting of the council.
Godwin said the Striplands feel they should pay a smaller sewer services bill because, unlike other residents, they paid for their water pump, they paid for their water lines, and they paid for the installation.
What the Striplands are not saying, city officials say, is that they and a few other families tied onto the city’s sewer system illegally more than 10 years ago.
The Striplands and others accepted a refund when the city thought the residents were paying for a service that wasn’t being provided, says finance director Gene Anderson, who was acting city manager when the illegal tie-in was discovered four months ago..
Flanary told the council on June 11 that the Striplands, “and I believe all of the other homeowners affected,” want to pay a fair amount for the city’s facilities.
“But they do not feel it is equitable — by having provided for themselves in large part a service that the city should have been providing – that they now pay the full amount, which on the face of the bills that they have received, really seems to be just an arbitrary amount of sewer charges,” the attorney added.
“They admit that you are processing their waste water, but they have paid for the pump and paid for the lines and installation of the lines,” Flanary said.
Three years ago, in June of 2009, the City of Paris — under the impression that the Striplands and some neighbors were paying for services that weren’t being provided — refunded the sewer fees and stopped billing them for sewer services.
The free use of the bootlegged city sewer services continued until four months ago, when the city discovered that the Striplands were connected onto the city sewer services illegally and had been for years.
On March 2, after the discovery was made, the city billed the Striplands retroactively back to January of this year, “and they’re all now being billed an identical amount for sewer services — $31.36 a month,” Flanary said. He suggested $25 a month would be fairer.
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Charles Richards Charles Richards moved to Paris in 2004 after retiring from a 40-year career in journalism – the last 26 years as a news writer and sports writer with The Associated Press in Dallas and Washington, D.C. In mid-2004, The Paris News coaxed him out of retirement, and he began covering the police, court and regional beat for The Paris News. Then in early 2005, he was switched to coverage of a sharply divided Paris City Council. He was appointed by the City Council in 2006 to the 12-member City Charter Review Commission, which extensively rewrote the outmoded document. His writing awards include two first-place awards in statewide competition for feature writing. The most recent was his 2005 story on a Paris doctor’s startling use of leeches in a successful attempt to re-attach a man’s severed ear. Over his career, Richards’ interview subjects include Alabama Gov. George Wallace, President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, David Koresh, Arnold Palmer, Muhammad Ali and numerous other political and sports figures. He is an alumnus of Texas Tech, where he was editor of the school newspaper. He lives in Paris with his wife, Barbara, who is retired after 30 years as a teacher and high school counselor.
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