Here they come

This morning people were still disputing their wacky bills but S&WB swears they've found at least 50 people they can send a sternly worded letter to.

The New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board is taking the final steps to notify about 50 customers that they could be among the first customers in almost a year to have their water shut off for failing to pay their bills, Acting Executive Director Jade Brown Russell said Wednesday.

After that, presumably, there are 10 days before shut-offs begin. 

Update: Just to add some things. 

The Mid-City Neighborhood Association heard an interesting lecture this week. 

Several S&WB officials spent Monday evening answering questions about billing, flooding and drainage issues from members of the Mid-City Neighborhood Association. Customer service representatives were also on hand to handle individual account queries.

Yvette Downs, the utility’s new Chief Financial Officer, said her office has addressed and reduced the number of billing disputes by two thirds, with the number of current open disputes around 3,500. Downs said she’s optimistic an automated meter reading system would solve a whole host of issues, but the S&WB doesn’t yet have the cash flow to implement that system. The utility’s billing system is also incapable of receiving data from automated meters, Downs added.

So yeah that seems straight.  The Messenger story also links back to this Advocate report from last month which tells us about some of the largest delinquent/disputed accounts. Xavier University owes $413,000, UNO is "close behind on the list" although the article doesn't give an amount for them. Loyola is in there too. So is Johsua Bruno who owns this Airbnb tower as well as several other not so popular properties.  But Bruno has had the mayor's ear in the past. And we know the universities aren't going to have their water shut off any time soon.  So who do we reckon are the 50 people S&WB is likely to take all of this out on?