Brockton resident Ayanna YanceyCato, who disputed a $100,000 water bill with city officials, stands in front of City Hall.
BROCKTON — Ayanna YanceyCato saved a lot of money fighting City Hall over her $100,000 water bill.
But she lost a lot of time.
It took more than two years, countless calls, numerous meetings and a trip to a Boston court to finally have her bill reduced to $3,400 last week.
It wasn’t easy.
“It’s a whirlwind of events that escalated, that affected me, my children, my mom, anyone who was close to me,” she said.
At one point last year, after receiving a lien on her property taxes, the stress was so great she had a physical breakdown. Her blood pressure spiked and she started to pass out.
“I told my mother, ‘You need to call an ambulance,’ because I was fading,” she said.
Paramedics raced to her home, and with her three children watching, they wheeled her out to the ambulance.
“They had strong concerns of me going into cardiac arrest, because I was not responding,” she said.
Why her fight lasted as long as it did, at such a personal cost, before she finally got the deal she was asking for to begin with is something YanceyCato can’t understand.
Neither can many city councilors.
“If you were going to settle for that amount anyway, that should have been done long ago,” said Ward 1 City Councilor Tim Cruise. “If we were going to settle for that amount anyway, we wasted everybody’s time – the state’s, ours, everybody.”
Councilor-at-large Jass Stewart said he saw YanceyCato’s case – and the other the disputed cases – as a failure to serve the customer.
“I’ve always seen this debacle as a management problem,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that it’s cost the city so much angst and anxiety and the residents so much angst and anxiety.”
Councilor-at-large Todd Petti, who has cautioned the city against being taken advantage of by residents looking to skip out on a bill, said he didn’t understand why the case didn’t go all the way to a hearing.
“For whatever reason, the city settled for that amount of money,” Petti said. “If they agreed to that amount, I guess we accept it. I’ll leave it at that.”
City Solicitor Phillip Nessralla, who ultimately negotiated the final settlement, said the case only recently reached the Law Department level, after two years of talks with the Department of Public Works had been exhausted.
The Enterprise left cell phone messages for DPW Commissioner Michael Thoreson on Thursday and Friday but did not hear back.
The Enterprise also reached out to Mayor Linda Balzotti, leaving two messages on her cell phone and one in her office on Thursday and Friday. She didn’t return those calls.
How it began
When YanceyCato opened her first big water bill, she never imagined it would be the start of an ordeal that would consume the next 30 months of her life.
Initially, she thought the bill was a typo. “I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. This can’t be right.’”
When she learned that she was being billed for 12 years of estimated readings, she thought the city would consider that its mistake, not hers, and fix it.
But that didn’t happen.
“For the city to be adamant that I owed this money was appalling to me,” she said. “That’s when I started reaching out.”
She joined a group of residents in similar situations who researched the law, discovered that bills can be appealed to the state, and pushed for the city to reform how it handles disputed bills. She also took her fight to the media, to any politician who would listen, and to City Hall.
Her bill was reduced to $17,000, but YanceyCato persisted – it wasn’t what she owed.
She didn’t reach a deal until last week, during last-minute negotiations before a hearing in front of the state Appellate Tax Board was to begin.
Responding to a crisis
YanceyCato’s $100,000 bill was the biggest example of the billing scandal that has plagued Brockton the past two years, where residents who had received years of estimated water bills finally got “actual” bills that showed they’d been paying too little for a long time.
The public outrage led the City Council to order a $97,000 audit of the Water Department, which revealed 70 different findings.
The audit, released this spring, showed that the city was using outdated and failing equipment, relying too heavily on estimated bills, and wasn’t encouraging ratepayers to get an actual reading of their meters.
Based on the audit recommendations, the City Council recommended in July that the city adopt a two-year water bill look-back policy, restricting the Water Department from recouping under-estimated usage more than two years prior to a disputed bill.
The fight extended to the City Council, where Ward 6 Councilor Michelle DuBois wanted to pass an ordinance that would make the look-back policy permanent, as well as put standards in place for how often water meters must be read.
The measure ultimately failed when a majority of councilors sided with CFO John Condon, who objected on financial grounds to making the policy permanent. Rather than take the contested provision out of the ordinance, DuBois said she would try to pass the full measure again this year.
Lessons learned
Under the look-back policy adopted by the Water Commission, YanceyCato got an offer to abate her $17,000 bill to $13,000. It was still higher than what she said she owed, so she turned down the offer.
“I was steadfast,” she said, adding that that is the biggest lesson she learned during her fight. “Don’t give up if it’s something you believe in.”
With a new batch of liens going on next month’s property tax bills, YanceyCato said residents need to know that they can appeal their water bill to the Appellate Tax Board through January.
Even though she feels like she won in the end, she still questions the cost.
“I don’t get any of this time back with my family, going to my kids events, the important pieces of my life,” she said. “I don’t get that back.”
Erik Potter may be reached at epotter@enterprisenews.com.
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