Broken water meters, class action suit: City’s utility drowning
The public water utility in Opa-locka faces complaints about high bills, broken meters and improper billing, as a class action lawsuit against the city moves ahead over the “inflated” water bills.
On the 15th of every month for the past year, someone from the city of Opa-locka went out to 4500 NW 135th St. to read the water meter — or so the bills say. No one was ever seen actually reading the meter.
For each of those months, the owner of the commercial building,
Frank Kriger, received a bill for the exact same amount — $1,687.64 — a figure that seemed improb- able not only because it was unchanging, but also because it was roughly double what he paid just a few years ago.
The same thing happened to his friend, Daniel Whitebook, who also owns commercial property in Opa-locka. Whitebook was billed $3,024.27 for eight consecutive months last year, according to copies of bills reviewed by a reporter. That’s double what he was billed in 2015, and more than triple his bills from 2010.
Both business owners said the increase is too much to be explained by recent rate hikes alone. (City records show water usage rates increased 36 percent between 2015 and 2018.)
“I don’t think they are reading the meter,” Kriger told the Miami Herald. “I think they were just send- ing these estimated bills.” He says he learned for the first time last month — from the county, not the city — that his meter is broken.
Both men said they have no idea how their recent bills were calculated, just that they were inexplicably high. Yet, both Kriger and Whitebook said they see no other option but to continue to pay the bills. Otherwise their water will be shut off.
Both said no one answers when they call the Opa-locka public works department about their high bills. The only explanation from the city was a generic memo sent in January 2017 to all Opa-locka water customers that stated some future bills might be estimated. The memo offered no specifics
on which accounts would be affected or how the estimate would be calculated.
“They’re guesstimating,” said Ron Jacobowitz, another commercial property owner. It’s an explanation echoed in various documents from a lawsuit against the city, including testimony and reports that suggest there is no rhyme or reason regarding the estimated bills.
Jacobowitz told the Miami Herald that every two to three months he receives a bill that is “way off” — always on the high side. Once in 2016, he said, he received a bill for
$20,000, more than 10 times what he should be paying. Jacobowitz doesn’t think his meter is working either and has received no explanation on the bills.
Water problems are not new in Opa-locka.
Complaints from water customers about high bills, broken meters and improper billing have been constant for much of the last decade or more. Other customers didn’t receive bills for years due to faulty equipment. At the same time, Opa-locka did little to collect outstanding bills from several large accounts, an inequitable billing system described by one staffer in a court affidavit as a “friends and family” policy that could land those involved in jail.
In 2016, several highranking former staff members did end up in federal prison, in part for their roles in shaking down local business owners for bribes in exchange for water connections.
In 2019, things are finally changing in Opa-locka’s water utility. Whether the changes are too little, too late, remains to be seen.
Miami-Dade County is in the process of taking over the billing of the water and sewer utilities and replacing broken meters, a process it says will be completed by summer. City officials are attempting to collect unpaid bills to build revenue for much-needed infrastructure projects, according to an affidavit from City Manager Newall Daughtrey.
However, progress is slow. And the city is still on the hook for its many errors, possibly to the tune of millions of dollars.
The city of Opa-locka did not respond to the Herald’s multiple requests for comment on this report.
CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT MOVES FORWARD
In 2017, George Suarez and several other resident business owners filed a lawsuit against the city saying that for years Opalocka water customers “have been subjected to government-prepared inflated water bills ... due to water meters that do not work.”
Citing an official audit and testimony from city staff, the lawsuit alleges city officials inflate customers’ bills by “flawed estimates and guessing.” By failing to provide water services in exchange for monthly payments based on actual consumption, the lawsuit alleges the city of Opa-locka breached its contract with holders of water accounts across the city.
Opa-locka has already spent nearly $200,000 defending the suit — money City Attorney Vincent Brown called well spent at the Jan. 8 commission meeting.
Earlier that same day a Miami-Dade circuit judge ruled against the city’s plea to have the case dismissed, based in large part on an argument that Opa-locka never had a contract with the holders of water accounts.
“They made an idiotic argument and they lost,” said Michael Pizzi, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. “The contract is you pay your water bill and pay your deposit, and they give you accurate water services.”
The ruling allows the Suarez suit to move forward to be certified as a class-action suit. If class certification is approved, the suit could be joined by the tens of thousands of Opa-locka current and former water customers, including Kriger, Whitebook and Jacobowitz, who are not currently part of the suit. That’s potentially millions of dollars in damages based on inaccurate bills and misappropriated deposits diverted to pay unrelated expenses.
The suit also seeks an immediate injunction that would require the city to return water deposits to customers affected by the ongoing billing problems.
On Jan. 8, the judge threw out only one of three arguments made by the plaintiffs — a civil theft complaint — but allowed it to be refiled.
MIAMI-DADE TAKES OVER, SLOWLY
Opa-locka buys water from the county at wholesale rates. The problems with billing — both bills that are outrageously high and a backlog of unpaid bills valued at more than $1 million — prompted Miami-Dade County Water and Sewer to begin taking over the billing system last year. Without accurate billing in Opa-locka, the county is also losing money.
In June 2018, Opa-locka sent a memo to residents and property owners that said the transition to county billing would begin within 90 days.
By January, the county was responsible for administering 352 Opa-locka water accounts, a fraction of the approximately 5,600 accounts citywide, according to Jennifer MessemerSkold, spokeswoman for Water and Sewer.
“This isn’t a matter of being able to flip a switch and from one day to the next, it goes from Opalocka to Miami-Dade Water and Sewer,” MessemerSkold told the Herald.
Before the county takes over an account, the county checks the information and verifies that the meters are working. If they aren’t, the meters are replaced.
“We’re fixing the bugs before we take over,” Messemer-Skold said. Of the meters currently being read by the county, Messemer-Skold said 116 — about one-third — needed to be replaced before the related account was transferred to the county.
Kriger said an inspector from Miami-Dade Water and Sewer came out to his property in late December, inspected the building’s water meter and concluded it was broken and should have been replaced long ago. It still has not been replaced.
Messemer-Skold said the county expects the county to administer all Opa-locka water accounts by summer.
A LEGACY OF CORRUPTION AND MISMANAGEMENT
The problems with Opalocka water accounts stem from years of mismanagement and corruption, according to a damning report from 2016 authored by Merrett Stierheim, a longtime municipal government expert who was responsible for overseeing financial expenditures in Opa-locka at the time.
Stierheim wrote that the county’s audit of the water utility in Opa-locka had uncovered “chaotic, maladministered, often unethical [potentially criminal] conditions.” The 2016 county audit of the public utility uncovered broken pumps and inconsistent billing practices.
Also in 2016, the FBI arrested several officials involved in shaking down local business owners who were pressured to pay thousands off the books to obtain operating permits, licenses, zoning benefits and water connections. Seven officials have pleaded guilty in relation to the bribery scheme so far, including former Commis- sioner Luis Santiago, thenCity Manger David Chiverton, and then-Public Works Supervisor Gregory Harris.
In recent years, the city also used water account deposits to cover payroll and other general fund deficits, starving reserves intended to repair and replace old infrastructure, as the financially insolvent city struggled to balance its books.
The trouble doesn’t seem to be over, however. In October, Daughtrey was fired after allegedly trying to file liens against several dozen properties with outstanding water bills of $10,000 or higher. Among the properties on the list were several public housing complexes, the Opalocka community center where City Commission meetings are held and then-Mayor Myra Taylor’s private school, which owed more than $100,000 in unpaid water bills.
All together, the list of delinquent accounts added up to millions in unpaid bills, accumulated by these few dozen accounts over the same years when people like Kriger, Jacobowitz, Whitebook and many others were struggling to pay unexplained and apparently inflated bills.
Daughtrey filed a whistle-blower lawsuit against the city after his contract was terminated without explanation. In an affidavit, Daughtrey wrote that he was fired for informing officials that the “‘friends and family policy’ on water collections and corrupt management of the water billing system that gave a free ride to wealthy individuals and companies would result in people ‘going to jail.’ ”
Daughtrey was reinstated by the new commission that took power after the Nov. 6 election. He did not respond to the Herald’s request for an updated list of delinquent accounts.