By Charles Sercombe
For several years there has been a water meter at the Wayne County Jail in Hamtramck unused and rotting away.
The city has either not collected a dime in water usage from the jail in all that time, or it has relied on estimates from when there was a working meter.
City Manager Katrina Powell said she is not sure what the case is.
The jail situation is not an isolated incident, Powell said.
It has been discovered that anywhere from 10 to 20 industrial customers do not have working water meters. Some of them may have been paying estimated bills for several years.
The situation is even more widespread when it comes to households. Powell said there are hundreds of non-working meters.
In a handful of cases, she said, there have even been some households with absolutely no meters.
How could this have happened?
That’s a question Powell could not answer. Was it part of the overall past dysfunction of the city?
Maybe, and probably most certainly.
Hamtramck has twice been put under state supervision through an emergency manager after its finances hit a rock bottom. The diagnosis of the city’s financial trouble has always included mismanagement of some kind.