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To the Editor:

At the September 25 meeting, the Town Council voted to pay the City of Anacortes $5,114 for reconciliation of the operation and maintenance (O&M) portion of the 2017 water bill. By my calculations, La Conner only owed Anacortes $3,050, a difference of $2,064. The accounting for Capital expenditures is never reconciled.

Anacortes made three mistakes. They assigned some charges to Regional (us) when they should have been assigned to Retail (city). For county taxes they charged us the full amount instead of reducing the amount by the overhead rate. They charged us for items that belonged to Capital instead of O&M.

I wrote to the Mayor of Anacortes. In addition to asking her for a refund, I asked her to modify the time sheets of the workers who work on the distribution system so that work performed for Retail is billed separately from work performed for the Regional customers. Right now, we pay for work done inside the Anacortes city limits.

In 2013 the Finance Director of Anacortes unilaterally changed the allocations of a number of accounts so as to improve the cash flow to Anacortes. The City Council never approved those changes. It is time to clean-up the accounting for water service.

Sincerely,

Dan O’Donnell

La Conner