SPEAKOUT

Saturday, August 1, 2015

An overdose of estrogen

This is about Bruce Jenner at the ESPY awards. His only problem is he lived most of his life with those crazy Kardashians. All that estrogen over the years changed him.

Adds up over time

I read in the newspaper and watched on television about the drought in California, so I decided to read my Sikeston BMU bill. I have to be conservative to keep my costs down. Why does the BMU charge me 100 times my water usage? When I was in business it would have been great to charge my customers 100 times what they owed me. Also, most cities charge 50 percent of water usage for sewage use, but BMU charges 60 percent. It's not much a month, but over time it adds up for senior citizens on a fixed income. Is it to pay to build water sewage lines for new subdivisions for the wealthy landowners that started the city of Sikeston? We would really like to know.

The 100 shown on the water services line of a BMU bill is called the multiplier. Since water meters record in meter units instead of gallons, a multiplier is used to arrive at actual gallons used. The majority of BMU's water meters use a multiplier of 100. On your bill, if you subtract the Previous meter reading from the Current meter reading and multiply that by 100 you will arrive at your gallons used for the month. Since sewer flow is not metered, sewer charges are based on the same amount of water billed for that billing period. For the bills sent at the end of July, August and September, the sewer charge is determined by applying the sewer rate to the average water consumption of the previous nine months or the actual consumption, whichever is less. This sewer averaging is to avoid charging customers for water used for lawn watering, car washing, etc., typical summertime water usage that does not enter the sewer system. This is the billing method used by nearly all municipal sewer systems. According to the Policies and Regulations of the Board of Municipal Utilities, construction of water and sewer lines for new subdivisions is the responsibility of the developer, not BMU. If you or any of our BMU customers have questions about meters, billing or how we fund infrastructure projects, we invite you to stop by our office at 107 E. Malone Ave. and talk with us. We are always available to our customers. -- Doug Shaw, BMU business manager.

Nit pickin'

This is in regards to "Need lice advice." She needs to check her children's hair for nits. It sounds like she's not combing the head lice eggs out of their hair. If she is doing that, she maybe needs to spray her car with some type of pesticide for humans. They may be picking them back up in school.