Last week I was having a chat with some of my neighbors. They had just returned from a cross-country vacation and were letting me live vicariously through their story and pictures. Talking about the trees lining the roads in the Southern US, crazy traffic, wild weather, and all of the family fun they discovered far from home. While it sounded like it was a really good time to be had, the conversation took a little turn to the water bill. They asked me if I ever had a late fee, because they seem to have a surprise $7 fee every month for the last few months. It didn't sound familiar to me, so I didn't really think about it much until I saw it on social media from hundreds of people.

If you search facebook for the Lawton Water Department, there's an alarming amount of posts on there about a very unlikely trend. Massive amounts of people getting hit with an astoundingly identical $7 additional late fee. Given that the standard late fee from the water dept is a clear cut 10%, and every home tends to use different amounts of water, a specific $7 tacked on fee applied to so many that swear their payments have always been on time sounds more like shenanigans.

As much as I'd like to take that dive in and just assume the worst... like it's some ploy to somehow subsidize the mortgage for a mall that hasn't attracted new jobs just yet, the logical thought here is it's might just be an undiscovered glitch in the matrix of how everything works. Regardless, it has grown to the point where someone in city hall needs to publicly address it. They need to find out the source of this $7 mystery charge, give a reason as to why it is happening, and either make good to the citizens they've accidentally overcharged or explain why the additional charge exists.

While I don't think it's a predatory thing that your government is doing to its citizens, you can't exactly put it past them to do such a thing behind closed doors. Anytime the city has needed money, the answer to a failed vote has always been "Put it in the water bill." It's time someone in city hall addressed this.

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