Mayor Bryan Calvo<\/a> signed an executive order launching a plan he says will bring solutions within 120 days.<\/p>\nThe move comes after months of complaints from residents who say their water and sewer charges are spiraling out of control.<\/p>\n
One of them is Nancy Nawaz, who told CBS News Miami she met Calvo while he was campaigning and pleaded with him to fix the problem.<\/p>\n
She showed CBS News Miami her most recent water bill for her Hialeah home \u2014 $1,066.04 for just three months, covering the period from September 17 to November 15.<\/p>\n
“When you see a bill for over a thousand dollars, you’re shocked,” Nawaz said. “A thousand dollars? Am I going to stop bathing? What do I do?”<\/p>\n
She said she has cut back dramatically on water use \u2014 even avoiding doing laundry at home \u2014 but the bills keep coming.<\/p>\n
“We thought washing clothes twice a week was causing it, so we started using the laundromat,” Nawaz said. “And I was still getting a thousand dollars.”<\/p>\n
She added that she hasn’t even been using her pool.<\/p>\n
“I don’t even turn on my pool,” she said.<\/p>\n
Other residents say the sewer portion of their bills is even higher than the cost of the water they use.<\/p>\n
“I pay more for sewer than for the water I use. This makes no sense,” said Rafael Llanes, a Hialeah resident who spoke in Spanish.<\/p>\n
His bill showed $54.95 for water but $117.45 for sewer \u2014 more than double.<\/p>\n
At City Hall, Mayor Calvo announced an internal audit led by the city’s Department of Public Works, aimed at finding out why residents are paying so much.<\/p>\n
“I’m signing an executive order,” Calvo said as he unveiled the plan.<\/p>\n
Among the issues to be examined, Calvo said, are the city’s aging water meters and a major legal dispute with Miami-Dade County.<\/p>\n
“Among the things that will be looked at is whether or not we should transition to automatic meters,” Calvo said. “We will also be looking at the litigation between Miami-Dade County and the City of Hialeah.”<\/p>\n
That lawsuit involves nearly $18 million in unpaid water and sewer debt that Miami-Dade County says Hialeah owes \u2014 a dispute that city officials believe could be contributing to higher costs passed on to residents.<\/p>\n
Under the mayor’s order, the Department of Public Works must deliver a report within 60 days. Within 120 days, city leaders are expected to receive a full set of options outlining how and when changes could be made to bring bills down.<\/p>\n
That means within about three months, residents should know what solutions are coming \u2014 and how they will be implemented.<\/p>\n
For Nawaz, who voted for Calvo, the hope is real but fragile.<\/p>\n
“I’m worried. I hope he can fix it,” she said. “Will it get fixed? I have hope. That’s all I can do \u2014 hope.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hialeah residents pay about 30 percent more for their water bills than other Miami-Dade County customers, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[28,225,227,226,12210],"class_list":{"0":"post-117258","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hialeah","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-hialeah","10":"tag-hialeah-headlines","11":"tag-hialeah-news","12":"tag-utility-bills"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}