MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Holly Springs resident Amanda Linton had quite the surprise in store for her this week when she checked her bills. She has become used to delayed billing from the Holly Springs Utility Department, but things have taken a dramatic turn.
“This particular bill we got on Sept. 3 was actually due on Aug. 10,” Linton said. “The utility department has been telling us for a year now that there is some issue with being unable to read meters in order to be able to bill us out an appropriate schedule… it's been a year of them telling us that.”
Linton isn’t alone. Another family said their utility payment has gone up by more than 300% from June to August for no apparent reason.
This is all happening in the middle of an independent investigation of the utility by The Mississippi Public Services Commission (MPSC), via Silverpoint Consulting.
MPSC officials said in the month of July alone, they received 165 complaints about HSUD.
At the Aug. 20 board meeting, Holly Springs Mayor Sharon Gipson grilled HSUD General Manager Wayne Jones over the widespread accounting issues.
“I must say, that since you’re talking about certain things, trying to set up your stage for something, we never missed a payment until you were hired. Now that is a fact,” Gipson said.
Linton and others have turned to ad-hoc solutions for their issues, with a Facebook group calling attention to individual problems for HSUD consumers now reaching over 3000 members.
“There’s no solution; there’s no real explanation. Surely, if there’s a problem reading the meters, it's fairly simple. It shouldn’t take a year to address that,” Linton said.
At that same board meeting, Jones said the HSUD has about $1.6 million in checks that are being held up, and some of the bank account balances have not been reconciled.
We have reached out to the Mississippi Public Services Commission for an update on the status of the investigation and will update this story when that comes in.