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PHIL REISMAN

Phil Reisman: Another Yonkers headache

Westchester
Phil Reisman

Roseanne Roseannadanna could only have lived in Yonkers.

As the frizzy-haired Saturday Night Live character used to say, "It's always something."

For years, I've been writing about the city's inability to accurately charge people for their water usage. You would think this was merely a prosaic governmental chore but, in Yonkers, it's...always...something.

Because of budget cuts dating back to the 1990s, the city has relied on a haphazard system of estimating water usage for 30,000 homes and businesses, resulting in wild fluctuations in billing amounts. In some cases, confounded homeowners have reported receiving bills seemingly out of the blue that amounted to small fortunes. One man laughably told me he once got a bill for nearly $20,000.

The city has been trying to solve the crazy billing problem by having state-of the-art water meters installed in 30,000 homes and businesses — a $12 million project that has almost been completed. Yonkers customers have been instructed to schedule an appointment to get the new meters installed by the contractor, Keystone Industries. Replacement is mandatory, and water customers who fail to meet an April 1 deadline will face fines.

Most of the meters have been installed without a hitch.

But nothing is ever simple in Yonkers. It's always something.

The latest "something" is that as many as 1,300 water customers will now have to pay private plumbers to replace outdated pipes and valves before the new meters can be installed.

It's pretty much an accepted fact of life that there is no such thing as an inexpensive plumber — and so the unhappy result is that people are facing out-of-pocket costs of at least $300. They would be lucky to get off so cheap. Most will likely have to pay in the thousands of dollars.

I first heard of this from a distressed homeowner, a mother of three who, in an email asked: "What happens to those families with far less ability to afford this, or seniors on fixed incomes?"

The problem is that Keystone is finding that homes in some of the city's older neighborhoods have nonworking valves, or no valves at all, making it impossible to shut off the water in order to install the new meters. In other cases, the company has discovered that water connections running in from the street consist of aged lead pipe that may be too brittle to handle.

Sometimes the discovery of such bad news is a blessing in disguise — particularly where faulty valves are concerned. Without a working valve, it's impossible to shut water off when pipes freeze — and any plumber will tell you that frozen pipes have been a common occurrence during this god-awful winter.

In any case, Keystone's installers are telling customers they won't replace meters until a licensed plumber comes in first and performs the needed work.

Liability is the driving fear.

As one plumber told me on Monday, "If you see some of the situations you wouldn't blame the meter guy for saying, 'I'm not touching it,' because, basically, you break it, you take it."

Every situation is different, too, so it's impossible to say exactly how much people will have to pay. A routine job would run between $300 and $500. A big job could cost $5,000 or more.

Whatever the cost, at this point the city won't pick up even a portion of it.

Yonkers plumber Sam Dahdal told me that, so far, he's had 15 or 16 calls to do the requisite work. To put it mildly, the customers are not pleased with the city's unwillingness to chip in.

"They're pissed off," he said. "A lot of them, you know, are saying, 'What the hell, it's their meters.'"

With 1,300 customers in jeopardy, it seems only fair that the city kick in a portion of the cost, or at least give those customers a break on their water bill.

Well, forget about it.

"In these particular situations, it's really the responsibility of the property," said Christina Gilmartin, spokeswoman for Mayor Mike Spano. "We don't want to leave it to the overall city taxpayers to pay for someone's lack of upgrade in their plumbing."

If you don't live in Yonkers, this whole fiasco might be worthy of your sympathy or a cause for schadenfreude.

But if you do live in Yonkers, you're saying, "It's always something."

And chances are you are pouring yourself a tall drink of something that's stronger than water.

email: preisman@lohud.com twitter: @philreisman