The Woodmen Hills Metropolitan District has recently come under fire because homeowners in some of the area subdivisions have received large bills for services provided by WHMD.According to an article posted Nov. 23 at koaa.com, Pamela Potter, a resident of Falcon Highlands Metropolitan District, received a letter stating that she owed $1,179.75 to WHMD for overdue sewer payments and late fees. On the same website, an article was posted Dec. 2 in which Paint Brush Hills Metropolitan District resident Raymond Kenning cited a similar scenario.Evan Ela, attorney for the WHMD board of directors, said that some of the billing confusion could come from the way the water and wastewater services are provided. Paintbrush Hills is on its own system for water but customers pay WHMD for treatment of their wastewater, he said. That treatment bill goes directly from WHMD to the customer, Ela said. Each Paintbrush Hills customer also receives a water, sewer collection and line maintenance bill from Paint Brush Hills, he said.ìI can see how Paint Brush Hills people could be confused because they want to know why they pay sewer services to two places,î Ela said. The bills are separate because the services arenít the same, he said.Similarly, the Falcon Hills district gets its water from Cherokee Metropolitan District, which is billed separately from the bill WHMD sends out for sewage collection, line maintenance and wastewater treatment, Ela said.In 2011, Paintbrush Hills and WHMD reached a litigation settlement in which WHMD was awarded sole operating responsibilities for the wastewater treatment plant the two districts had initially built as a cooperative endeavor, Ela said. Following the settlement, Paintbrush Hillsí customer accounts had to be placed into the WHMD database as wastewater customers, he said.ìThere were software issues back then during the conversion,î Ela said. ìNow, we (WHMD) send out bills to Paint Brush Hills and have since 2011.îWhile Ela said he isnít positive about the reasons Potter and Kenning never received bills from WHMD in the past, he said, ìApparently, there are a bunch of people who are either ignoring their bills or getting divorced and the other person is getting the bill. All we can do is take the (billing) information weíve got and use it.îEla said part of the reason some of the bills were so large, as in Potterís case, could have been because the district failed to certify the delinquent amount in 2012 when it had the chance.ìThere are three ways to collect on unpaid bills,î Ela said. ìWith a water customer, you can demand they pay or we shut off your water. That happens sometimes. We give them a couple months to pay and if they still donít, we turn their water off. Thereís a charge to have someone come turn it off and then a charge to come turn it back on when they pay.ìThe second option is that if you donít pay what you owe, state statute says that amount automatically becomes a lien against your property and the district can go through the mechanics (for the) lien foreclosure process. Thatís rarely used, and itís really cumbersome.ìThe third is that districts can certify the delinquent amount to the county treasurer and he can put that amount onto the tax bill. Itís the same as a tax lien. Once per year, in the fall, a district can certify the accounts and have them put on the tax bill.îEla said in the third option, state statute mandates that a district give notice to people and provide a hearing to give them an opportunity to state why the account should not go to the county treasurer. In the fall of 2012, there were many interim people in director positions with the district; and the certification process didnít happen, he said. All the delinquent accounts that shouldíve been certified in 2012 didnít get certified until this year, Ela said.ìEach county has a deadline to meet in order to certify those accounts, and El Paso Countyís deadline is the end of November,î he said. WHMD gave notice to the delinquent account holders but it was only 10 days because the November meeting was held earlier in the month in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday, Ela said.ìThatís pretty tight, I admit and I hope in the future, we can give people more notice,î he said. ìNobody showed up to the meeting to protest the delinquent accounts, though.îThe board and staff agreed to give people an additional week to pay before they send the bill to the county. Ela said the district didnít certify all delinquent accounts that met the criteria, which is $150 owed and more than six months late. ìWe used a cutoff of $500,î he said. ìIf it was greater than that, we certified their account but if it was lower, we didnít. Their bill will still say what they owe for that month, what was delinquent and the total amount due.îIn an attempt to notify people buying houses in either Paintbrush or Falcon Hills, Ela said he contacted the county assessor, Mark Lowderman, to explain the situation and determine if there is a way for the county to notify potential homebuyers of who provides what service to their home. Lowderman told Ela they couldnít do it. ìWe are working to have better notice for people saying what district youíre in and the taxes they levy and that kind of thing,î Ela said. ìThere is a better notification system in place than there was a year or two ago and some of those things have been dealt with statewide.î
