I attended one of the senior coffee hours with City Council members and posed a question. As expected,

all I received as an answer was the standard politician’s hot air.

Why did the city go to monthly billing for water/garbage? The response was that some people were having problems budgeting for bimonthly billing. Now that’s too bad. Those people knew that the bill was coming; each month, they should have put aside money for the bill.

Supposedly, the city is not receiving more income from monthly billing. Instead, it costs more – double the cost of postage, paper and ink for the invoice, the mailing envelope and the return envelope, as well as employee time. It costs me extra postage and check.

My food budget is only $50 a month. Any extra and unnecessary expense at all further limits my food budget.

When asked how the extra expense was being paid for, the councilman stated that it was coming out of the money received from the new monthly billing. So if they’re not making more money, aren’t they losing money?

Just doesn’t make any sense to me. Another example of councilmembers’ muddy thinking.

– Dianne Osborn