On February 8 the Town of La Conner paid the City of Anacortes $6,940 for reconciliation of the water bill from 2020. The real amount owing was $3,068. Anacortes owes La Conner $3,872.

The problem was that the city’s finance director failed to recognize that the former mayor committed the city to follow the Gray & Osborne study of 2005, which allocated customer records based on the number of accounts, instead of number of gallons of water usage. With 8,295 accounts in the water system, mostly in the city, it makes a big difference.

Secondly, he failed to follow the budget for 2020, which...