For the second straight month, Hennessey town trustees were addressed by citizens concerned about potential overbilling in their utilities.

The trustees held their regular August meeting last Tuesday with several citizens in the audience.

Last month the board was addressed by Kelly Bullis about commercial properties she owns and asked the board to investigate the issue.

Among those who spoke to the board this month were Austin Whittenburg and Sherry Lee.

Whittenburg’s Complaint “My house, where I currently live, has been completely re-plumbed, completely remodeled. I’m top-to-bottom electrical, plumbing, everything. I hadn’t really had any issues out of my water bill at the house until the past three or four or five months. Then all of a sudden, it jumped up from a normal $65 or so a month bill, to $200 or $300 a month.

“Across the street at my office, same problem: water bill was $200, $300, $400 a month.

“The car wash: $600, $700, $800 a month and it’s on well water.

“My house is on septic, so I don’t have any sewage usage.

“The only trash usage I have is at the car wash and at my home and I’ve been paying $1,500 a month for a long time.

“And I would like to say that the car wash has just been gangbusters and staying busy and I’m washing 20 cars a day, but guys, I’m not. Depending on which bay you pull in, they’re fourand- a-half to five-and-a-half gallon-per-minute trips. If 20 cars were to roll through there a day, averaging 60, 65 gallons, that’s maybe 1,200 gallons a day.

“But once again, I haven’t been using city water, but yet my sewage bills and trash bills have been $600, $700, $800 a month.

“I was told that the sewage was calculated off of last year’s usage as far as water. Well, once again, I’ve never been – that’s another one of those places I’ve spent lots and lots of money having plumbing done, checked valves. I also have a metering system in there that everything the water sends, everything the town sends in there when I’m using town water, so I’m able to meter what comes in that building.

“My meter has never, and I’m not saying my meter’s accurate, but my meter has never matched the town’s meter.

“And I’d just kind of had enough with it and I’ve drilled water wells everywhere. I was also told in the past that I couldn’t use the water well if the car was washed. That water well was drilled before that car wash was built. So I have all rights to use that.

“This past month-anda- half I’ve been using city water to car wash and my last month’s bill, I think, was under $400. That’s the first time I’ve turned my city water on in a year, or year and a half ago.

“That’s when I go from $700-$800 a month for just sewage and trash and I’m using trash, sewage and water and it’s under $400. I just don’t understand what the deal is.”

“Do you know what you were paying for sewage?” asked Trustee Bert Gritz.

“I can’t remember right off the top of my head,” replied Whittenburg. “I actually spoke with Tiffany (Rowen) and Shelley (Burch) yesterday (at Town Hall) and from what I can see on your commercial rate page, it’s just a little under 7 cents a gallon. I came to the board several years ago and said I’m watering my lawn in the summer and I’m having to pay for sewage on that and it’s not going down the sewer system. And the town board at that time agreed to average the winter months and charge that through the summer months.

“Correct, Shelley?” “Correct,” Burch said. “It’s been like that. I mean, that’s the way it was kind of explained to me yesterday when I spoke to them recently and I’m just not quite buying it, or understanding it,” Whittenburg continued. “I don’t know what your readings are, but I do know sewage. If I use 50,000 gallons of water a month, I’ve done good business and I don’t think that’s ever happened.”

Sherry Lee Complaint

“I’m here tonight because of a water reading that has set off alarms, not in my home, but in the city administrator’s office,” said Lee. “According to her, that means water issues can only mean one of two things: I have a water leak, or some sort of mysterious plumbing disaster.

“Let’s review the facts,” Lee continued. “In February, my previous read was 71,504 and the current read was 105,050 gallons for Feb. 21 through March 17 of 2025. That’s 33,546 gallons of water usage on a vacant house.

“There’s nobody there, no lawns being watered. There’s no bath. There’s no one even flushing a toilet in this house. This would make sense if I was running a backyard water park 24-7.

“But here’s the catch: There is no leak. I’ve checked, double-checked and confirmed that there was not so much as even a dripping faucet.

“My husband is a plumber. I would know. And here’s what’s more interesting. According to the meter, the usage spike continued all day and all night, get this, from 4:06 p.m. on February 22 through 4:06 a.m. on March 6.

“After that, the usage went right back to the normal readings. The odds of this happening naturally are slim to none, but the odds of a faulty meter logging phantom usage seem to be the likely cause.

“For perspective, the average household of two people uses about 3,000 gallons a month, a family obviously more. My bill was for 33,546 gallons of water.

“So according to the meter, I managed to use more than 11 times the amount of water that two people would use to run a household in 13 days without a single sign of excess water flow anywhere on my property.

“Of course, the idea that the meter, a device already known for producing false readings, could be wrong, is apparently unthinkable. Instead, the narrative seems to be that I must be guilty of some unseen, water-wasting crime.

“If these meters were truly flawless, I wouldn’t be standing here having this conversation. Yet here we are. I am asking the board to acknowledge the ongoing concerns about the meter’s reliability, investigate the phantom usage and to stop presuming the residents are at fault without solid proof. Accuracy should come before accusation.

“I have two bills here. My average bill for that house when I had a resident was $97.60. It was a single elderly lady in her 80s. I have a $297 bill for this period, February through March, and I would like to request a $200 refund.

“I also took my concerns to Mr. (Mayor Harold) Shaw after I was told by Tiffany there’s nothing I can do, you just have to pay the bill.

“This is what she said: ‘I didn’t know the house was vacant.’

“Vacant? It’s none of your business if my house is vacant. The problem is, there’s a serious issue with this meter. At 4.06 p.m. on the 22nd to 4.06 a.m. on the 6th, don’t you think that’s a coincidence?

“This isn’t fair! “I’m also upset with the way that the people in the city office handled the situation because it’s like, there was nothing I could do.

“‘You’re just going to have to pay the bill,’ I was told.

“That’s ridiculous.” The comments were made during the “citizen comments” portion of the agenda. There was no action items regarding the issue on the agenda.