MARANA, AZ — Dozens of people in Marana have been receiving inaccurate water bills and say they want answers from the water company.
More than half a year has gone by since Jed Baker was appointed Marana's new water district manager.
Since day one, he says his office has faced constant obstacles.
"When I came out here on May 22, the entire staff of the district had quit."
Baker says former employees left him with financial issues, infrastructure management issues and HR issues.
"We you talk about the financial condition of the place we had accounting system issues, we had fraud issues, we had records, issues, we had off-books transactions from the credit cards, we had documentation issues and we also had revenue issues."
Baker admits there have been people getting over charged for water they may not have used and says billing has been an issue.
Currently, Baker has three other employees in the entire district serving an area of 2,200 customers.
He says their response times can cause even more problems for people waiting to get a corrected bill.
"When the books are messed up, when there's no staff, when the records are messed up, when there are issues with oversight, when the plant shuts down three times in four months, getting the bill two days later is not the number one priority, it can't be."
Baker says anyone with an incorrect bill will not have to pay that amount and asks people report it and give them time to manually check the meter.
"And I don't blame them for being upset. When you get a $600 bill and you know you didn't use that much water and you can't find of leak, of course you're frustrated, of course they want it fixed now. We go as fast as we can sometimes it takes two weeks sometimes it takes a whole billing cycle."
