Local Water & Sewer District Overcharging. What can be done?

Anyone have any experience on the following and what possible course of action to take?

FYI the Water & Sewer Utility are separate from the HOA. Here are our latest issues:

1)Vacant lots charged for a service they are not receiving:
Our local Water & Sewer District Utility has been charging vacant lots for sewer service for years. There are 4 commissioners. One commissioner thought this was illegal tried to get the other commissioners and their attorney to look into it.

Long story short is there is evidently something to this as they stopped the practice in September. What they did not tell everyone is that according to this commissioner, people that were charged can get a refund going back 3 years. According to this commissioner, the utility's attorney basically warned in a private meeting about this problem if the info got out into the public.

I wanted something more substantial. So I submitted Public Records Request (PRR) on this issue to their office and they were delayed and eventually denied & redacted. I complained to the above commissioner what the office manager was doing about the PRR. He sent a letter to the contractor that employs the office manager, informing them that it was illegal to deny or delay a PRR per Washington State Law.

The following week after my PRR, the Commissioner was facing allegations of sexual harassment by the same office manager. Now the commission has been kicked off the District property by the contractor that employs her. He can only show up to Commissioner meetings. The accusations by the office manager are looking like retaliation. This commissioner has been on the Board for 7 years with no prior problems and now a week after the office manager is reprimanded for delaying a PRR, she is now making sexual harassment allegations against this commissioner.

They are also lawyering up.

2)Water & Sewer Utility continues to charge monthly service fees to properties whose service is terminated:
Basically the legal premise with the vacant lots is they are billing owners for a service they are not receiving. This immediately led me to ask the next question:

If they cannot legally charge a vacant lot owner, how can they continue to charge monthly water and sewer fees to a lot that has had their service disconnected for non-payment??? This is a practice they have been doing for years! To me it seems the same as your electric company charging you for electricity after you stop paying your bill and they cut service...

The reason this is an issue for our HOA is some of the properties are going to have to be foreclosed on and they have Water & Sewer Utility liens on them for very large sums. Those liens are superior to the HOA's but in my opinion they are not valid if the Utility had no legal basis to begin with to charge monthly service fees to vacant lots and homes not receiving service. But honestly I don't know for sure without spending more money on the HOA attorney. Just hoping there might be something out there someone knows about to clarify the issue? Can a utility like this really charge people for a service they are not receiving?

Is the HOA foreclosing on these homes or is the bank. If it's the bank, then the HOA and the utility company is out anyways basically. Only fighting for scraps. The HOA lien may not be less superior to the utility's. It depends on your state. There are "Super liens" that some states have that make the lien filed by the HOA on the SAME level of the bank's. Which could make it superior to the utility.

I don't know where your assumptions are that these things are "illegal". It may just be an assumption or use of common sense that can't be applied. I wouldn't assume because you don't like the practice it's somehow "illegal". That's up to the court to decide.

If your HOA is foreclosing, it doesn't want the house in the first place if that can be avoided. We have many many old posts about that to read up on here. I won't go into details. However, I hope your HOA has policy in place of when to lien and then when to foreclose on that lien. We had a 6 months we liened and 1 year we CONSIDERED foreclosure depending on the circumstances. One can NOT foreclose on an active military person who is still serving. There are many factors in deciding if foreclosure is a route to take.

Warning if you do go to the media, that kind of drags your HOA in the mud. It's better to approach that as an individual and NOT in the name of the HOA. It's a separate issue of the HOA if the HOA isn't paying any of these water bills. It is an individual homeowner issue then.

James G there could be a hook up fee attached to the empty lot. I know whenever they offered us water out in the country a few years ago we had to pay a $500 hook up fee to hook up to it. We had the option of staying off of it but still a fee for connection exist. Which means someone has to pay it to cover the costs of making it available even if no one is there. Makes not much sense but there are costs involved and they can pass that along.

Gnome

Is your concern the people getting a refund or getting the lien removed so your association can foreclose?

I would assume the lien so foreclosure can be considered. If so maybe you can pass that buck to the empty lot owners for them to take care of. Then go after their azzes.......LOL

Thanks