\n\t\tWinter Haven road closed after tunnel forms between retention ponds\t<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThe core job of city council is to manage this city and to hold an administration responsible when clearly they have a problem,\u201d said Matthew Weidner, an attorney and president of the Eden Isle Civic Association. \u201cYesterday in council, they talked about the fact that they know there\u2019s a problem, but there\u2019s nothing concrete. There\u2019s nothing specific.\u201d<\/p>\n
Council member Brandi Gabbard, who proposed the management review, said complaints from residents continue to flood in and credited media coverage for keeping the issue in the public eye.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think now, as we continue to hear from residents, as unfortunately, the media continues to bring this issue to light,\u201d Gabbard said. \u201cWe at City Council continue to be asked by our residents to dig into this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month, 8 On Your Side emailed city leaders asking if they would consider an independent audit of water billing and adjustment practices. That message came after months of reports showing residents receiving bills of several thousand dollars per month, including one case exceeding $50,000, and a $300,000 bill even before last year\u2019s hurricanes.<\/p>\n
City records show that in March, council approved a $65,000 contract for consultants to study billing problems tied to hurricanes Helene and Milton.<\/p>\n
Weidner said taxpayers are tired of paying for reports without solutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t need to hire consultants and spend another hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money,\u201d he said. \u201cThey need to have staff come in and explain it to city council.\u201d<\/p>\n
City administrators said a new billing software known as Tyler is expected to roll out in mid-2026 to help prevent future errors. Council Chair Copley Gerdes, however, cautioned against launching an evaluation while that system is still being rolled out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe snapshot of billing and collections, and then we\u2019re drastically changing the operations of billing collections because of a new software and implementation of which,\u201d Gerdes said.<\/p>\n
Weidner and other residents argue that the city shouldn\u2019t move forward with new technology until it\u2019s transparent about what went wrong with the current system.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil they are honest with the public about what happened with the existing billing system, they had no business rolling out a new one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The full council is expected to vote on the management review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The move follows months of complaints and 8 On Your Side\u2019s reporting that uncovered bills in the tens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-2295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295","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=2295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}