Jay residents voice concerns on water
At Monday night's meeting, Jay council members discussed the influx of calls from Jay residents who are requesting a recheck of their water meter following a rate increase according to Jay Operations Manager, Eric Seib.
Seib said that they have received 10 to 12 customer calls per week asking for a water meter recheck.
He said it's the accuracy of the new meters versus the old ones, which allowed some water to slip by, and what used to read 2,000 to 3,000 gallons is now reading 5,000 to 6,000 gallons.
“The good news is the new meters are working,” said Seib. “The bad news is people are starting to notice and thinking something is wrong.”
Seib said it was March's bills that have prompted the calls, and suggested the warm weather may have people using more water as a reason for the increase also.
Seib said that the rechecks that have been done have been accurate and predicted more calls and rechecks before area residents get used to the higher rates and more accurate water readings.
Facebook page
A Facebook page for the Town of Jay is in the works and council members discussed how to address feedback whether it is negative or positive and the possibility of blocking it.
Jay Attorney Steve Cozart told the council that they would run into constitutional problems if any censoring of feedback on the page took place due to the municipality being a government
“Whatever regulations you do have got to be content neutral,” said Cozart. “You can't filter out something based on content. Because this is a government agency anything you do is state action as opposed to private action.”
Jay Mayor Shon Owens suggested contacting another city that currently has Facebook and find out how it addressed the issue. Further discussion was about the possibility of having content only with no feedback.
The council decided to table the issue.
