Mayor Mike Duggan recently unveiled a 10-point plan to help prevent Detroit residents from having their water service cut off. The city on Saturday had a water fair at Cobo Center to help people make arrangements to pay their bills.
But will that be enough to avoid another public relations nightmare if the city resumes cutting off water service on Tuesday to those who have delinquent bills?
We shall see.
In all likelihood there will be some story of a household with children having water shut off.
The question is: Will the public, and critics who screamed loudly before about the shutoffs, perceive that the city was fair and had done enough to help residents before resuming shutoffs?
Undoubtedly, many will give the city the benefit of the doubt. But it's still unclear how it will play out for others.
The Detroit News reports that roughly half of Detroit’s 170,000 customers were delinquent as of last spring. From March to late July, Detroit suspended water service to nearly 17,000 residents. But many of those customers paid their bills and had service restored.
“It’s not viable to let paying the water bill come to be seen as an option,” said Tom Curtis, deputy executive director of government affairs for the American Water Works Association, told the News.
“The utilities have an obligation to the broader city to make sure the utility is viable and sustainable to serve all the residents and business,” Curtis said. “You can’t let uncollected bills go on and on without a significant consequence.”
-- Allan Lengel
Line out the door: people lining up to make #DetroitWater payments. Today is last day pic.twitter.com/TC1mC2FmAC
— Roop Raj (@rooprajfox2) August 25, 2014
