CITY OF GARLAND TX HATES OLD PEOPLE

As a senior citizen I live on a very fixed income and like an increasingly large number of us, barely make ends meet from month to month.

Garland TX owns its own utility company and is one of the few cities in Texas to reject deregulation of electricity. You either buy your lights from Garland Utilities or you buy your own generator and maintain it.

Because so many retirees are paid only once a month Garland Utilities is flexible enough to let our due date on your lights and water bill slide until the day you receive your income -- provided you call them each month and ask for an extension.

And for this magnanimous bit of understanding -- they only charge you 5 percent of your bill each month.

Don't call and ask for an extension and your service is terminated.

So each month I get a cutoff notice, I call Garland Utilities, they extend my due date until the first of the month.

I do this every month. The cutoff date listed in their notice is always around the 25th without the extension and they adhere to it strictly.

So, comes November.

I come in the evening of the first and our water has been turned off -- despite me having a receipt showing the bill had been paid that day as promised.

For turning the water back on I was charged $60.

Yesterday I called for my monthly extension and was told it could not be granted, that I had not paid the full amount due. It was my understanding that the reconnection fee would be added to the December bill. Garland did not see it that way.

So I had to pay the $60 then and now I have to call back today and beg for an extension since my payment will be noted on their books today. Otherwise when I come home tonight either the lights or water -- or both -- will be turned off.

I wrote my city councilman an email about this and he evidently referred it to a Charles Cooper of Garland Utilities.

Mr. Cooper said he reviewed the situation and discovered that I had asked for an extension in October and one in December but did not ask for one in November so they turned off the water.

I told Mr. Cooper he could give me any excuse he wanted, but to please not insult my intelligence by telling me I had not been granted an extension. If I had not they would have shut off my service long before Nov. 1.

The bottom line is I had to use the money I had stashed away for refilling an arthritis prescription tomorrow and pay it to Garland Utilities to keep my electrical service from being terminated.

The city of Garland TX -- one of the last of the great robber barons.

And they can get away with it.