LUMBERTON — Residents of the City of Lumberton made their frustrations clear regarding recent errors in billing for city utilities, with several taking the opportunity to speak up during in the public comment period of Monday’s monthly City Council meeting at City Hall.

Residents’ complaints stem from high utility bills for the month of August, which the city acknowledged in a statement posted to its website and social media accounts last week, which said the high bills were the result of a months-long underbilling caused by meters being read incorrectly by an employee who is no longer employed by the city. Customers, the city says, were underbilled for those months, so the city is now billing “high to exactly the same degree that prior bills were artificially low,” it says.

City Manager Wayne Horne told The Robesonian that the city isn’t sure exactly how much money it lost in the underbilling; City Attorney Holt Moore added that the city would have to go back and look at every meter reading from its approximately 10,000 customers obver the course of several months to determine an actual dollar amount.

Some meters were misread for a four-month period, Horne said.

Residents who spoke, as well as other previous media reports, suggest the resulting bills are hundreds of dollars higher than a typical city utility bill could be expected to be.

“These inaccuracies are not just minor errors in some cases; they have doubled or even tripled the expected costs without a corresponding increase in usage,” said Danny Parsley, who was perhaps the most adamant among those who spoke regarding the billing errors. “This is not only financially crippling, but also unjust for hardworking families who diligently manage their consumption.”

Parsley said his family has been charged to compensate for meter misreadings that occurred before his family moved into their home in April. A petition stating that residents should have the right to “expect accurate and fair billing” for utilities had over 600 signatures as of Monday morning, he said.

“We ask that you conduct a thorough review and urge the city to investigate the extent of the incorrect meter readings and the resulting financial impact of the affected households,” Parsley continued. “This review should be conducted transparently and with the utmost urgency. I will say that if it’s not I will be submitting a FOIA request to get that myself.”

Heather Logsdon said she believes her meter hasn’t been read at all for an unclear amount of time, and that it also wasn’t read on another occasion about two years ago which resulted in a $2,000 utility bill.

“I shouldn’t have to take a picture twice a month to make sure that the person that’s being paid by our tax dollars is doing their job,” Logsdon said. “That shouldn’t be a thing. I shouldn’t have to do their job for them. … This is all assumptions, and you can’t assume what I did last year is what I’m doing this year, because my life is different every single day, every single month, every single year.”

Jeff Lambdin said he wasn’t at the meeting simply to talk about the billing errors, but “the bigger problem,” and questioned the broader functionality of the city government through the lens of the issue.

“This seems to point out that the staff of the City of Lumberton is acting as a dysfunctional team,” Lambdin said. “Communication is not happening, supervision is not happening. Because of this dysfunctionality, city staff has now lost the trust of the citizens of Lumberton. … Was this an isolated incident or, God forbid, are there other things happening in similar departments that we have no idea are going on?”

While some commenters sought for a direct response in the moment from Mayor Bruce Davis and/or members of Council, City Attorney Holt Moore stated that it is standard protocol that members of the board do not respond during the public comment period “to avoid an argumentative situation.” Horne did give a prepared statement in response to the concerns due to the extenuating circumstances and volume of complaints.

“(Since) the city first became aware of what happened, many customers have been able to resolve their issues by calling Public Services, or coming in and discussing their accounts and setting up payment plans if needed,” Horne said. “Again, we regret this happened and we are taking prompt and concrete steps to avoid it in the future, and we appreciate your patience and understanding.”

Horne also stated that the city is close to implementing Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), which will make meter reading a more automated process with the goal of eliminating human error. The city was “working on” AMI infrastructure back in 2016, he said, but the impact of hurricanes Matthew and Florence in 2016 and 2018 delayed progress in that implementation; Horne stated previously that finding funding has been a challenge.

He also mentioned the city has approved a Public Information Officer position “so that we can be more proactive in our communications with the public,” and the position is currently in the interview process with a hiring expected within the next month.

Horne told The Robesonian that city policy is for customers to have the same number of months to repay a billing error as the number of months in which the error occurred, but that due to the large scope of the error the city is offering 12-month payment plans to help spread out the billing corrections over a longer period of time for less money per month.

After Horne’s statement, Parsley asked for and was granted a chance to respond, in which he was more animated than during his previous comments.

“Instead of actually taking responsibility as elected officials, you want to sit there and let the burden fall on the people that voted for you,” Parsley said. “And you think that people aren’t going to remember this. I can promise you they will. I will not drop this.”

An unidentified man who had not signed up to speak in the meeting then moved to the podium and began to speak, saying that he had attempted several times to meet with Mayor Bruce Davis but was unable to get a meeting scheduled, suggesting Davis was unavailable to discuss his concerns.

“We’re all members of this community,” the man said. “So for any of you to sit up here and tell us that we can’t speak to the people that represent us, that is a lie, sir. I came in this building today to say a lot of things, and if it weren’t for Officer Graham, I’d be really irate right now. Nobody sitting up here (on the dais) has any idea about the people that live in this community.”

In addition to the several residents who spoke in person at the meeting, Moore read several comments submitted by email from residents who could not attend Monday’s meeting.

“It seems that customers paid the bills presented to them, in good faith that they were accurate, only to be told they must pay an undisclosed amount for ‘past undercharges,’” Margaret Crites said in one email comment. “I would argue that we as customers have fulfilled our end of the contract by paying the presented bills and that any discovery of error on the city’s part should be an issue for the city to resolve without creating crisis for people that believe they’ve already met their burden.”

While it had comparatively less controversy, some opposition was also voiced regarding a rezoning request that was ultimately passed unanimously that will allow for a Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers restaurant to be built at 2406 North Roberts Avenue, adjacent to the new Highway 55 restaurant.

The property will now be zoned CZB-4 (commercial zoning business general commercial) with the conditions that the property can only be used for a restaurant and that there will be no access from Elmhurst Drive, which borders the north end of the property.

Moore read two email submissions during the public comment period from residents of nearby properties who are against rezoning. Kathy Carmichael spoke later during the public hearing which prefaced the rezoning vote by Council, stating concerns on noise, traffic and flooding that she said could be caused or worsened by the restaurant.

“It just feels like it keeps getting more closed in, for what was left of the neighborhood,” said Carmichael, who stated she has lived in the neighborhood for over 50 years.

Councilman John Carroll, in whose Precinct 3 the property sits, made the motion to approve, stating he had listened closely to both sides of the issue and citing the conditions of the rezoning

“The drainage issues, the hydraulics engineers, the developers, they have to responsible for taking care of their water retention for any structure that is built there,” Carroll said. “With the vote of the planning board and the research they have done, I would like to make a motion that we approve this rezoning.”

In other business, Council:

— Approved a resolution accepting services for repair work at the Lumberton Regional Airport, which consists of filling in cracks in the asphalt on all taxiways and both runways and cleaning and/or repainting runway and taxiway markings. This project will be paid for by grant funds from the North Carolina Department of Transportation Division of Aviation and has no local match required.

— Approved a rezoning request by Leland Fuller for property on Kahn Drive for the development of a car dealership.

— Appointed Amy Barker to the Main Street Lumberton Advisory Board.

— Recognized recent retirees including Terry Parker, a captain for the Lumberton Police Department with 28 years of service, and Joseph Frederick, a sergeant with LPD with 13 years of service.