Customer Petition Targets Bristol-Bluff City Utility

By Gary Gray
Reporter / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: November 17, 2008

More than 200 Bristol-Bluff City Utility District customers have signed a petition calling for its manager and three commissioners to step down due to increasing problems with billing and customer service.

Utility officials said they are shocked at the move and claim they’ve had very few complaints, even though a recent restructuring has placed all billing matters in their hands.

Ben Beach, who lives on Bethel Drive in Sullivan County, said his experiences with the utility have been increasingly confusing.

“I called yesterday to find out when I’d be getting my bill, and they were real smart with me, saying they’d get to it when they get to it,” Beach said. “You never know when you’re going to get your bill. I normally used to get it around the 10th of the month. Now, you never know.”

The nonprofit utility, which has 11 employees, reorganized its operations in September and hired Tina Grindstaff as manager.

“Two hundred names – that’s alarming to me, because we’ve not had that many complaints,” Grindstaff said. “One of the main reasons we changed as of Sept. 1 was to improve customer service. We’ll always try to resolve any issues.” 

Tipton Construction, which has had a working relationship with the utility district since it formed in the mid-1950s, previously handled billing. The company now reads meters and performs some of the utility’s maintenance work.

The utility stopped using Tipton in April in an attempt to cut costs,  and hired the Bluff City accounting firm, Stanfield & Thomas, to handle billing and collections. But after a 90-day trial period, commissioners felt the firm was not handling the job adequately.

“Due to costs and expenses we felt we could do things cheaper than having someone contract with us,” Commissioner Mike Morrell said.
Tipton employees continue to read water meters and report the readings to the utility’s employees.

Sharon Goodson, who reads meters for Tipton, called the Herald Courier on Thursday with news of the petition and that she was aware that customers were upset.
Many customers say that move was a mistake and the utility has bitten off more than it can chew, Goodson said.

“I work with Tipton, and I understand the community has a petition,” she said. “When they [utility] changed things around, they decided to try to do the billing, but I’ve been hearing from customers that their employees have been rude to them.”

The petition, initiated by Harley Hyatt, who lives off Exide Drive in Sullivan County, mainly expresses concern over the utility’s decision to no longer accept walk-in cash payments:

“What do we do if we have no checking account, or have trouble getting a money order in time? Since the new water commissioners and Tina Grindstaff have been in place, the payments and the customer relations have dwindled.”

The petition then calls for Grindstaff and the three-member commission that sets policy for the utility to be removed and billing placed back in Tipton’s hands.
Hyatt said he intends to hand the petition to Grindstaff sometime soon.

“I’m not trying to fight with them, and this is not just about me,” Hyatt said. “They’re trying to be big-time, but they’re forgetting their customers. If you’re operating a business and have a good volume of customers, why is their office in a construction site trailer?”

An Aug. 28 letter sent to all customers clearly explains that the customer service center is only temporary and will be replaced with a permanent building in the near future.

The letter also asks that customers not bring cash to the site for security reasons.

“We probably have about 5 percent of customers coming into the temporary center wanting to pay with cash,” Grindstaff said. “We’re asking that they mail checks or money orders. We’re also encouraging customers to begin paying by automatic [bank] draft.”

Grindstaff said some customers will experience longer billing periods as the transition continues because workers are getting new software and other systems in place. That means some might get a bill for 40 days or more, she said.

The Herald Courier on Thursday requested and received from Goodson a copy of that letter and the top page of the petition. But the fact the petition was sent from a fax machine at Tipton Construction Co. did not sit well Friday with Mike Tipton, the company’s president.

“I’m upset that this would come out of our office,” Tipton said. “People are not calling our office and complaining. And if we wanted to stir something up, we would stand a chance of messing up a long-term relationship.

“Not doing the billing anymore hurt a bit, but not tremendously,” he said. “We were getting $3 a customer per month – a fairly minute amount of money in the grand scheme of things. But my employees should not have anything to do with this. They should be out doing the job they’re paid to do.”

Morrell said there might have been some animosity created when the utility decided to do the billing itself.

“I think their feelings were hurt when that happened,” he said. “Someone might take it as a slap in the face, but no one intended that at all.”

From August 1999 through July 2008, the utility was operated by Kulpsville, Pa., -based Environmental Engineering & Management Associates Inc., which administered the permitting and performed all testing and required reporting.

Tipton Construction worked alongside EEMA reading meters and billing customers and still is used when problems with water lines occur.

The utility was having difficulty starting up their new water treatment plant, so its consulting engineer introduced the commissioners on board at the time to EEMA in hopes of solving the problem. The company developed a proposal to operate and maintain the facility, and commissioners signed a two-year, full-service, renewable contract with the company.

“Up until the last board of commissioners, everything was fine,” said Peter Lau, EEMA president. “The new commissioners wanted one-year contracts instead, and we fulfilled three of them. When 2008 came around, they decided not to renew our contract and decided to take it over themselves.”

Grindstaff replaced Donna Lawson, who was working for EEMA as the utility’s director under the agreement with the company. When the latest contract expired and was not renewed, EEMA reassigned Lawson to another location.

The working relationship between EEMA and Tipton was good during those 10 years, Lau said.

“When we first went there they were having a lot of problems,” he said. “At the end of the first two-year contract, things were in pretty good shape. Terry Wilson – a commissioner who later resigned – told us that as long as his phone didn’t ring late at night we had a contract for life. But things have to change eventually, and I know we left there on good terms.”

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