I live in small community about 25 miles from Ann Arbor.
The community implements technology for community management but seems to prefer the analog (manual) way of doing things.
For example, they installed RF water meters a few years ago but failed to invest 10K in receivers. Now someone has to drive past every one of the 1000 or so buildings and take individual readings instead of getting a monthly report. In my mind wasteful as this is the high cost option and not green sensitive, but that’s another conversation.
Additional evidence is that in a community meeting a few months ago they said they were doing away with the process of using multiple excel forms to calculate individual employee benefits. The new manager elected to use the existing payroll / benefits software.
You should also know, the Mayor instructed community employees to ignore my communications if they contain what they misinterpreted as insulting and disrespectful comments. Fact is I made a typo, they assumed it referred to my calling them stupid. Without clarifying they became defensive. I apologized and clarified the typo. but they never owned their part of the misunderstanding. It’s not in my character to outright call someone stupid, although I might call their actions into question or request clarification.
Anyway, back to billing… there was online bill access but I found I could see every bill in town by a very simple change during login. I shared that with a friend and on line bills vanished sometime after that. I imagine she complained.
Currently the water bill is generated and emailed on the day of generation with a copy of the news letter and calendar. The bill requires payment regardless if it is received or not with resulting penalties. A paper copy follows with all documents a few days later. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee of delivery considering the months of problems with mail delivery. I’d hope the community is using a program that allows for the inclusion of attachments and automated mail merge. But with the potential of analog processes one never knows.
I have sent several questions in formal business correspondence to community staff including the mayor. There has only been one response from the person who handles the water bill but the digital bill is still missing. As there has been problems with the bills for a couple months or so I’m not sure if I should continue to follow up. With 20+ years in technology management at corporate level, billing problems should never exist especially when there is a legal requirement for payment, or at least not more than once in a few months.
In a later Facebook (Meta) exchange the mayor responded with a single word, leaving her response open to wide interpenetration. When I responded sharing the full range of what was contained in the email suggesting her team had some onus in the situation and asking she respond, the mayor disappeared, but not before bring my character into question.
Here’s my question… do you think I’m being gas lighted by the community?
What's next? 