comment: >
  
  You can educate on the errors of the past without being insufferable. You may be well intentioned, but you’re derailing from progress because of an inability to learn from the past. Exceptions do not make rules. You also have failed to provide any amount of evidence.
context: Residents were being charged a connection fee based on their water usage. 
  
  OK, so they pay a flat rate and have a maximum amount they are allowed to use. Wonder what, if any, visibility they have of their usage?
  
  Residents learned it was part of an audit authorized by the county commission in September 2016.
  
  So an audit was done from 2016 onwards to monitor usage?
  
  The residents said they received the high water bills in the final weeks of 2022.
  [...]
  According to a county memo, the audit found “220 residential customers and 87 businesses were determined to be using capacity in excess of 120% of their current allocation.”
  
  So they audit for 6 years, let people unknowingly exceed their allocations, then backdate it and slap them with $16k+ fines? For going 20% over? This screams of cash grab. >
  
  So, you could have moved into a place in 2022 but have to pay for the last 6 years? >
  
  Yup, they said it’s a transferable fee. >
  
  That doesnt make sense.  What about the monthly rate that, assuredly, everyone was paying through that period?  Commissioner should go to jail i guess? >
  
  Years ago when I moved into my house they tried to hit me with the last tenants stretch rate for energy.
  It was nearly 700 a month for a 2 bedroom.
  Had to fight that for weeks, now I pay around 120. >
  
  I once got a 1200 bill for gas. No one would listen to me that a 1 bed apartment without so much as a stove, couldn't use that much gas, even if I had opened the valve and let it run for the month. Months later, after God knows how many calls, and having moved house, one intelligent soul took 2 minutes to look at the records and came back with "looks like we charged you for cubic meters instead of cubic feet, the bill is actually 200" if I could have kissed that guy I would have (I did write a very nice email to his boss) >
  
  Stupid mistakes must be a thing for all of them. 
  When my husband and I got our first water bill for our house it was crazy high. Don’t know how, but it turned out that a local restaurant’s water bill was combined with ours. >
  
  for the past 2 years my water bill has been under a completely different name... I just pay the bill. ive tried getting it fixed. They claim I would need to pay ANOTHER deposit they can go to hell I paid 1 deposit already that they took to pay for the previous homeowners leftover water bill.
  The name they have on the account now isn't even the previous owner is just some random person. Im 100% sure utility companies are run by morons. >
  
  I swear it is on purpose. >
  
  "He took the fall for how it was handled, saying residents should have been given more information and given the opportunity to reduce their water use"
  We fucked up, but you still have to pay thousands of dollars. >
  
  The allotment is far less than the average American household use also. >
  
  What was the allotment? I don't see it in the article.
  The EPA says the average American household uses 300 gallons a day >
  
  18k/quarter so less than 200/day >
  
  
  “I’ll tell you up front, when we look at, from a county perspective, the way that was handled was not done well,” Calvert County Administrator Mark Willis said. “The customer service was horrible.”
  
  No! Not getting the money owed back after handing over $20 for a Coke is horrible customer service. This is nothing short if grift. >
  
  It sounds like they’re planning to just take the blame for the bad roll out, not the policy that’s going to charge people thousands of dollars for standard residential water use. >
  
  Christ. In my area, we pay $3 per 1000 gallons of water, and a ~25 cent/day smart meter fee.  The smart meter allows them to do wireless billing and leak detection.  The water quality is excellent and the local service company is fast/efficient. >
  
  You must not be in Utah.  It costs $20 to flush the toilet there. >
  
  Upstate NY, we have full access to Lake Ontario/great lakes. We also have the option to tap our own wells and pump our own water if we want. Water is good either way :) >
  
  You know what this article really says? “oh shit I am NEVER moving to Calvert County!” >
  
  you were never going to in the first place lmao, place is a DUMP except the waterfront areas >
  
  Me personally? Nope, no reason.  But other folks that find work in the area might see this when they do some due diligence and be like “fuuuuuuuck I don’t like surprise $17K water bills!”
  It’s bad press to be sure and reeks of mismanagement. >
  
  Would be a shame if people didn’t pay that bill, and instead used the money to buy pitchforks and torches for other reasons. >
  
  Don't you Americans have a whole right to arms for this sort of thing? >
  
  Government has arms too, and most people are afraid of getting shot for other people. >
  
  I live in Maryland but a different area.
  This is definitely bullshit price gouging. I'm pretty sure our water bill is like $10-$20 a month.
  Even at $50 a month it would take over a decade to take that much. The state should delete the utility for this kind of shit and let the state run it fully. >
  
  They’re claiming that any household that uses over their allotted 18k/quarter (nearly 10,000 gallons less than the national average) needs to pay for an additional connection fee to the county utility. Unheard of. There’s a clip online of the original commissioner who passed this in 2016 saying that it wouldn’t affect any residents, just businesses. And now a few hundred households got these bills… should be criminal. >
  
  Can I ask where you’re seeing the 18k/quarter and the 28k national average? I read the article but I didn’t see it in there anywhere.
  I work for a utility and our usage, for a family of 3-4 usually runs somewhere around 3000 gallons on average (I assume you’re 18k and 28k are gallons). We’ll have some that use closer to 6-7k but the majority hover around 2-4K per month.
  Could he different depending on the area, but almost 9500 gallons per month is crazy high for our system. >
  
  There are a lot of other posts about this on Facebook with all the county documents. It’s 18k a quarter water and sewer, average American household uses 300 gallons a day according to a couple of sources online. This works out to be 200/day. >
  
  When you say “water and sewer” is that “gallons in and gallons out”? Like, they get 1 gallon from their tap and .95 gallons goes into the drain?
  If so, that would make a lot more sense to me. 
  I’m not meaning to refute you or anything. I was just a little confused because, like I said, my own experience with my system has the average person using much less water. >
  
  Think you are missing that it is by quarter which would be the high end of your range 4000*3. >
  
  Which is still less than half of the other guys claim of 28k/quarter >
  
  I've read that during the great depression, when banks tried to foreclose on some farms, the neighbors would ban together to chase the bank representative away. Maybe it's time these people did the same. >
  
  Another trick was the locals would show up to foreclosure auctions and intimidate binders so the original owners could buy it back for next to nothing. >
  
  You know that was white citizens councils and the Klan protecting their own right? >
  
  What exactly is your point here? terrible people can still come up with good ideas.
  Was their implementation good? No. Does that write off the idea? Also no >
  
  The point is the racist power structure supported their like minded neighbors. To look uncritically at these past actions is a-historic.
  No one helped minorities and those same citizens through the sheriff enforced those evictions, often violently protected by immunity. Many lynchings also were tied to these property actions. But yeah just present it an Mayberry. >
  
  Ye, again great points. Tragic story, utterly disgraceful. 
  But can we maybe not derail every potential idea for the modern world just cause they did it in the 1930s, but obviously it being the 1930s most people were racist aholes. >
  
  You can. I choose not to white wash solidarity of the commons by pretending it was altruistic but a maintenance of the same power structure that is a through line from slavery, Jim Crow, today's boards and law enforcement.