Fighting City Hall - Utility bills

Jefferson asked about stories regarding fighting city hall. I am currently in a battle with a village (small town in Ohio). Their policy is to charge the landlord (ie park owner) for any delinquent water/sewer bills when a renter moves out with a past due balance. To make matters worse, they don’t send us a copy of the invoices, and they have a very lenient shutoff policy (some accounts were 90 days past due) so we end up with a $300- $400 balance and they expect us to pay it. We know that Ohio state law does not address this topic, so we are digging into the local ordinances which so far as we can tell do not address it either. So it appears this is just a rule their water dept made up at some point in the past. Just to be clear this only applies to our POHs - ie whoever is title holder to the home. Our association attorney says this is quite common but doesn’t strike me as fair or legal.

It is common in our area for some utility companies to attempt to hold landlords responsible for the debts of what are basically criminal tenants. This seems to be a random decision based on individual companies being too lazy to want to chase the criminals.
If the utility was in the tenants name we call the utility and simply inform them that legally the person on the utility bill is the one responsible and that we refuse to pay. They are simply taking the easy route but do not have a valid case to collect from the landlord.
If you have your lawyer call the utility company lawyer they will back off quicker.

I’d say ‘fight city hall’ on that one. You are not the customer who has defaulted on the water bill. The utility company only has recourse to the customer, not whomever owns the house.

We are gearing up for a similar fight. One of our master-metered parks on city water is being billed $30/pad/month in addition to being billed for the actual water usage. I have no problem with paying for the water we use, but the $30/pad/month charge is outrageous. The utility company says ‘we bill a flat $30 fee for each home we read.’ Well that sounds fine for a single family home with one meter. But for the utility company to count the number of mobile homes we have and upcharge us $30 for each one is absurd. We are master-metered, which means the utility company has one meter to read (just the same as a SFH with a single meter). I’m having my attorney do a bit of research into the legality of the water company’s uncharges for each mobile home. But I’d love to hear any stories about how others have fought such billing abuse.

God bless you all in your fight for property rights,

-jl-

I’m in a similar fight in VA. I contacted the MHA for VA and they informed me that in VA they can legally do this. The city is able to justify this based on the results of a rate study that showed a disproportional burden being placed on the city’s utility services from master-metered multifamily properties. Obviously, I’m doing my best to explain it here but probably failing! lol

In any event, it definitely seems janky and I’m not giving up on this one just yet (we were in diligence). If anything definitive comes out of our case, I’ll be sure to hop on here and let you know. It seems like this is happening to people with a little bit more frequency. You’re the fourth such case I’ve heard about since I found out about this park’s troubles with water.

@Jefferson, How is your fight on the utility billing issue coming along?

Water company is stalling. My attorney is on business in Japan…(!) for another week, so I’m delayed. I want her to make a ‘friendly’ call to the water company CEO requesting the documents.

Will keep you posted,

-jl-

Please keep us posted

How did this issue resolve?

Bumping this again. Did you have any luck @Jefferson ? I’m about to start the same fight.

I use to rent houses in a city that placed liens on the property for unpaid sewer bills. Finally the state changed the law allowing this.