Company caught
Firm that used city hydrant offers to pay $100 for water it used, asks for meter.
After reports and videos from residents who watched a paving company routinely use a city hydrant for water, Kingsbury Sweeping has offered the city $100 for the water and asked for a water meter.
The city installed the meter on a hydrant by the company’s building on Industrial Park Drive at the end of July, said Mayor Dennis Baker.
At least two different residents, and a private investigator hired by one of the residents, took videos over the last year of Kingsbury Sweeping using a city hydrant to fill its street sweepers and water truck. They referenced the situation at City Council meetings, after which Kingsbury Sweeping asked for a meter.
The city routinely puts meters on hydrants for contractors to use while doing work, but Baker said the hydrants near the company were not metered.
“Previously, they were not getting water from us,” he said on Aug. 11.
A week later, he learned that residents had taken videos of the water usage. On Tuesday, he spoke with one of Kingsbury Sweeping ’s owners, John Pickett. Pickett agreed Tuesday afternoon to pay $100 for the water and said one street sweeper had been filled up once.
“It has 300 gallons, so that’s
$1.37,” Baker said. “He said he’d pay $100. I don’t think he even should pay that much because it wasn’t intentional.”
Pickett said that he, or his employees, did not realize they should not use the hydrant, Baker said.
“So it was unintentional, and they have a meter now,” Baker said.
Before he learned about the videos, the mayor defended the company last week, saying owners John and Amy Pickett “would never do anything like that.”
Last week, he chose Amy Pickett to be a member of the Police Civilian Internal Affairs Review Commission.
If he was given proof of water theft, Baker added last week, he would take action.
“They’d have to pay us some money. We’d bill them for it,” he said.
On Tuesday, the mayor said he was surprised to learn that there was more than one video, saying he’d believed Pickett when Pickett admitted to using the hydrant only once. But he said he felt the matter had been resolved in any case.
A private investigator filed a detailed report of multiple days of observing the company using the hydrant last summer.
She wrote on one date that she observed an employee filling a “white sweeper truck, NY plate 24432-SM.”
In another video, a man appearing to be John Pickett hooked up a water truck to the hydrant, according to videos reviewed by the Times Union.
Amy Pickett declined to comment. John Pickett did not return messages, but an employee at his business defended him.
“John pays a lot of taxes, more than most. People should give him a little bit of a break,” said the employee, who did not give his name.