Judy writes,
My daughter, Karen Nikazy and husband had tickets for Buffett concert. After Mayor Dean and Chief Serpas appealed for people to stay home and since they live in Spring Hill and all major roads were closed they stayed home.
Bridgestone Arena refused to refund or issue other tickets. Try to be a law abiding citizen and see where it gets you. Lots of upset Buffett fans.
THIS IS MESSED UP!
Through a recruiting office I was recently offered a new position, which I accepted. I was instructed to give notice at my current job because the new job needed me as soon as possible. I gave my notice and my last day was 4/9. On 4/7 I received a call from the new company’s HR department with the official offer, benefits, etc. I was then informed casually that along with the drug test I would also be tested or nicotine. Apparently the company is a smoke free environment and does not hire smokers. I informed her that I was a smoker and was NEVER told this through the entire process, phone interview, face to face interview or numerous calls with the company and my recruiter. When I told her I was a smoker she informed me that I would not be eligible for the position as my test would be a fail. There is much more to this issue which I can get into if there is a chance you can help me.
I contacted my recruiter and they were not told of this policy either. Now I am unemployed and nowhere to turn. Is there any type of action I can take? I understand it is legal for them to have this policy however shouldn’t it also require them to make it known?
Please let me know if you can assist me. I am going to lose everything!
Thank you.
I have just spent the entire day at my local vet with four cats that I applied [Sergeant's Silver Flea Killer] topical solution to.
My vet says they see these reactions all the time and I want to know why the product is still available for consumers to buy and use on their pets. Three of the four will most likely live, however we transported the fourth to the 24-hour care vet when our vet closed at 12. He is in a drug induced coma due to the convulsions he suffered from me using this product. It has affected their nervous systems and are now having to take a five-day regimen of meds and we are having to monitor to make sure the three at home do not begin convulsions because the first three days are the worst, is what the vet says.
I feel like the general public needs to know that these products can be deadly to their animals especially if the vets say they treat this continually this time of year! I have already spent $1,700 toward keeping them alive.
Please help me to get this info out to the public, we are harming our innocent animals and thinking we are helping them. I have reported the case to Sergeant’s 1800 # and their response to me was they would MAIL me a form to fill out and would consider a reimbursement once they reviewed each case. I told them they could plan to pay for all of the bills and if the cat dies due to use of their product I will not stop ‘til they are out of business.
Let me know if you think you can help me get this info out to the public to help save our pets.
Thanks so much!
Ron Reed is a customer of Metro Water Services.
“Loan sharks don’t get that kind of money,” I holler.
Reed nods his head laughing.
For most of his life, the 60-year-old has worked in finance.
“I worked for the Small Business Association for 20 years. Then I was over all the lending and financing and collections in Tennessee for 20 years.”
Reed said he always pays his water bill on time. “I got this May 9,” he says holding up his latest bill for $28.60. ”And I paid it May 9.”
Paying on time, however, is not so easy for many water customers now-a-days.
“That extra 10 bucks hurts doesn’t it?”
“Exactly and they don’t know about finance,” Reed says.
Reed is talking about Metro Water Services’ policy of assessing late fees of $10 to customers.
“Is that userous?” I ask. “I mean you have a $28 bill and it is late, $10 is tacked on — boom — Is that userous?”
“Yes,” he says unequivocally. “Absolutely, I think that it comes close to about 1000% APR.”
To prove his point, he grabs a calculator and a stationary pad with numbers all over it.
“Here is the classic banker formula.”
The financial expert begins walking me through a financial theorem.
“You can figure out principal on a loan,” he says, his finger dragging across the paper.
He says he can figure out the annual percentage rate through a simple formula known in the financial world as: I = P x R x T or Interest = principle x rate x time.
Reed punches numbers in his calculator. Then he comes up with a number. It is mind boggling:
“982%,” he says.
My eyes widen. Can that be true, I think to myself. Even the worst credit cards don’t charge over 30%
Its true Reed assures me.
He says, “They have never been taught and they think it is just $10 is no big deal but it is and your government is doing it to you.”
Emily Evans is Ron Reed’s council woman. Reed is smart and sagacious in the ways of government, money and certainly the inner workings of the Metro Water Department.
She is kind enough to meet with me at her well-maintained Nashville home.
Like Reed, Councilwoman Evans knows a thing or two about finance having worked as a municipal bond underwriter for a major investment bank in Nashville.
“So when I hit you with I = P x R x T it’s not unfamiliar to you?”
She laughs at me. It is like Big Bird asking Issac Newton if he knows what letter comes after B in the alphabet.
“Not is basic stuff,” she says, her laugh filling the quiet of her neighborhood.
Evans doesn’t dispute Reed’s math but says it is misleading.
She says the interest rate seems unusually high because the water rates in Metro are so historically low. Essentially she says if the bills were $200 instead of $20, a $10 late fee wouldn’t seem so high.
“Part of the problem is that water rates and water bills are so low,” she says,” so late fees as a percentage of the water bill is yes out of line.”
NES’ late fee is 5%. 5% on a $150 or $250 dollar bill is a $7.50 or $14 charge so, on average, it’s around the same, $10. Because the bill is so much higher, you don’t think of it the same terms.
Nashville Gas is the same, 5%. It too works to be a few of $10 or $15 but because the bill itself is so high, customers don’t notice it.
It is more the fact that water bills are so low, this late fee sticks out.
Evans has a soft spot in her heart for those who have trouble paying the automatic $10 late fee but tells me that mayor and city council signed off on the $10ollar late fee because it was a better option than raising water rates across the board. She calls this option and water capacity fees and storm water fees one big band-aid for a problem that has to be dealt with on a citywide, systemic level.
Evans makes no bones about it; rates are going to have to be raised.
“Metro Water had to balance the budget last year. We still have to balance the budget. We need enough revenues to pay for clean water and returning that water from the sewer system back into the Cumberland River. It is a fact: this was one option available in lieu of a rate increase last year and the year before. There are other things we have talked about like capacity fees. This is just another part of the band-aid put on the sinking ship. We have to raise rates anyway. But the council and mayor’s office want to look at all this. Late fees are one. Capacity fees are another and funding storm water. All these things need to be considered and put together in one package. We are working toward this later in summer or late fall.”
Sonia Harvat, a spokeswoman for the Metro Water Department, wrote:
Water rates in Nashville have not been increased in many years. In fact, the last change in rates, in 1999, actually lowered residential water rates by 25%.
As we evaluated budget alternatives last year, we had to decide whether to ask everyone to pay more for their water, or to ask those who make our costs higher to pay a bigger share.
When people pay their bills on time, we avoid the additional accounting and collections costs associated with late payments and bad debt. We chose the option that keeps costs down for most of our customers.
A customer can avoid the late fee by paying their bill when it is due.
The late fee information is clearly stated on the bill and on our website at www.nashville.gov.
Payment Policy:
In order to avoid a late payment charge, which is the greater of $10.00 or 5% of the current net bill, payment must be posted within 15 days of the bill date.
Accounts overdue for more than 15 days are subject to be discontinued.
This South Nashville home is no Oz but if it was, this yellow brick road would be stained with rat carcasses.
The constant barking would break the Tin Man’s heart.
The brainless Scare Crow would scratch his straw head and wonder; “Where are all the rats coming from and why can nobody stop it?”
The cowardly Lion would take one deep breath and run away from the over powering stench.
The problem?
A bunch of angry snarling Toto’s pooping up a river of stink.
Janice O’Neal is no Dorothy. She’s a grandma who is pissed!
“Anyone who comes back here and says they don’t smell it is a bare faced liar.”
O’Neal is furious. She is a human pit bull who is tired of living in a cage of stink.
She leads Al and me to the rear corner of her Hewlett Street home.
Like a wet blanket of noxious odor, the smell sticks to our skin, filling our nostrils, making our eyes water.
“We can’t let kids in the back yard play. We can’t sit out and grill. The smell is so bad. It will make you puke!”
O’Neal waves her hands in front of her face. She turns her head away from the rear fence. She seems weak as if the nauseating smell is reaching through her nostrils and sucking the energy from her.
She lowers her head pulling her shirt up over her mouth and nose. Like a sickened hunch back the angry little woman moves away from the rear fence line.
“It stinks. Whatever it is it stinks. It is god awful. It is all the time!!!”
Other family members chime in like an angry chorus.
They hate the stink, but that’s just the start of it on Hewlett Street.
Rats and feces and stench. OH MY.
Like the tip of the spear, I go to the yard where the odor is emanating from. The yard is dark because of the thick layer of tress over head. The smell of feces is pungent in the air. As I walk forward I imagine this is what Bubonic Plague smells like.
Behind the home there are pens and dog houses and six Beagles. There are feces in the cage and dog food scattered about.
But quite honestly, the pens and the backyard don’t look that dirty to me.
The smell is another story. It is encompassing, like mustard gas. It is pervasive and prevalent and pernicious. It seems to blister the epidermal layer of all who dare encroach on this invisible denizen’s lair.
I see a number of rats laying dead. There’s one in the weeds. There is a dead rat on its back near a shed; its white belly is exposed. I can see the rodent’s little rat fangs sticking through his little rat lips.
Jennifer Ladd lives at this address. The young woman who answers the door is friendly and eager to answer questions about the smell, the dogs and the problem that some say begins in her backyard.
Ladd comes to the door with her two-year-old son Michael. The toddler is wearing a diaper which is appropriate for the questions I ask her about the feces and stench.
“Actually it is the house behind us,” she says. “My dad keeps the dogs clean.”
Ladd tells me that the smell disgusts her. She says, like the O’Neal family next door, that she is also afraid to put her baby down in the backyard because of the rat infestation.
“They carry diseases. They can get a hold of this one,” she said as she snuggles baby boy Michael closer to her bosom. “I have not been able to let him go in the backyard.”
“So what I have here is a neighborhood where nobody can let their kids play in their own backyard because there are so much feces and rats. Is that messed up?”
“That is messed up!” she parrots.
Ladd tells me that Metro Health has been here and put down rat poison. That would explain the dead rats in her backyard.
But who is to blame? I wonder. What so many rats? Why so much stink? Where is the clean up?
Loading …Rats and Feces and Stench, OH MY!
Ladd tells me that the people behind her on the next street over are the problem. She alleges they wash their dog feces down the hill in an unsanitary river of fecal matter. She says that is the source of the smell.
Al and I go to this home on Norma Drive.
We go into the back yard and find a dog pen. The sign is to the point: “BEWARE OF DOG.”
A black and white pit bull mix rushes the fence banging his anvil sized head into the mesh. He is angry and possessed and wants to grab Al’s scotum and chew it off for a souvenir.
We will later learn this dog’s name is Little Man. There is nothing little about the aggressive behavior the dog exhibits.
Even the owner tells Metro Animal Control officer Billy Biggs, “Be careful, Little Man will bite!”
That’s like, Quint, the grizzled salty fishing boat captain in Jaws, telling Roy Schieder that shark has a taste for human torso.
At Messed Up’s request, Biggs bangs on the door at Norma Street.
Biggs walks to the pen and inhales deeply.
“I don’t smell nothing,” he says to co-worker Terry Jones.
Both Jones and Biggs move closer to the fence which is about four-and-a-half feet high.
“The pen looks clean,” Biggs says softly, trying not to disturb little man. “I don’t think the rats are coming from here.”
Jones points to the Ladd house in the background indicating the source is there. He steps closer to the fence.
Bad move.
Little Man explodes from his hiding place and throws his angry dog body against the chain link barrier.
Jones, a veteran animal control officer, is startled as the dog comes very close to snapping off his head.
“I got to go get me my pole,” Jones says taking five steps backward.
Biggs bangs on the door of the home.
A young woman holding a small baby answers the door.
Biggs tells the woman who identifies herself as Cynthia King that he is investigating the stench and the rats.
Cynthis King, Like Ms. Ladd tells me that her dogs are clean.
Biggs tells me that the dogs are licensed and up to date on shots. He says the sanitation division inside the Metro Health Department is responsible for the other health issues.
Before Biggs leaves he tells Mrs. King that the neighbor behind her with the six Beagles is probably the source of the problem.
King says she is not surprised.
“Their yard and their dogs they are nasty back there and that is where the rats come from,” King tells me clutching her small child.
Just then, fellow Health Department worker Jawon Lauderdale arrives. His ID card indicates he is with Metro Sanitation division.
Lauderdale knows this area.
“We got the complaint on Monday,” he tells me. “With the volume and the amount of animals there, you have to expect that there will be some sort of smell. There is going to be a smell. So we asked the owner to maintain the pens, attend to the pens, if possible, twice a day. If the problem persists, what we do is send out a notice that there is a problem. And they should take proper steps to keep the property clean, to clean behind the dogs, feces, put out straw or hay to absorb the problem.”
So Metro has checked the dogs. Metro has put out rat poison. Metro is trying to deal with the source of the stink.
None of this is good enough for Janice O’Neal who talks to me angrily behind the protective face shield of her shirt.
“Come out here and do your job,” she screams at the camera, pretending it is the head of the Metro Health Department. “Get rid of the odors and get rid of the rats. Get rid of the problem, everything that causes it. The source of the stink.”
She is angry and her words are coming at me in disjointed bursts. “I invite every official to come and sit in my backyard and eat lunch if you can.”
I inhale deeply and feel the caustic burning stench fill my lungs. “It smells like a toilet back here. I don’t think I want to.”
She laughs her first laugh of the day. “It is worse than a toilet.”
That afternoon I get on a conference call with Metro Health Department officials.
They confirm there is a problem and they are treating the area for rats.
“Whenever people have outside animals and feed them outside there is a rat problem,” Brent Hagar, Director of Environmental Health Services tells me over the phone. “We have issued the occupant with the Beagles a 10 day notice for sanitation issues,” he adds. “There is no requirement in Nashville that says how many dogs you can have and she has six beagles. They were checked. They are all vaccinated. They seem to be in good health. But there is a sanitation problem with the waste. They were issued a citation Tuesday and we were out there on Monday we asp went out and treated for rats that day. We found rat holes. We put rat poison in the holes.”
Hagar says the rats come because dog food is scattered everywhere. Hagar says the smell comes from the feces which are not cleaned up appropriately.
“Rats = disease,” Hagar says. “There are a number of health issues. They can carry plague. They can contaminate food products. They can bite. They can destroy property.”
Monday, May 12, 2008, Hagar calls me back. He tells me that his people have been swarming this neighborhood looking to rectify this horrible problem. The director tells me that they have treated again for rats and will continue to do so till the rat infestation is eliminated.
He also tells me that in addition to the woman with the Beagles, the Health Department just recently cited the dog owners on Norma Street. Hagar says the family there has allegedly been burying the animal waste in the backyard, which is not permissible. Hagar says the family now has ten days to fix this problem or they too will be cited into court.
Hagar tells me that the health department is on this problem and will get it fixed.
For the residents in this stinky, rat infested neighborhood, one can only hope that Hagar’s Ruby slippers click together and solve everyone’s problems.
Until then I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore Janice O’Neal.
December 20, 2007.
Joan Bennett is driving her grandson Austin back to their Goodlettsville home. They are returning from a holiday party at the 10-year-old’s school.
Joan is less than a mile from home when she calls her only daughter, Deborah. With Austin in the back seat she tells Deborah how much fun she had and how wonderful everything was.
It was Christmas time and the world was full of cheer.
That would be the last time that Deborah Bennett-Barnes would ever talk to her mom.
Moments later, as the cruel tides of fate would have it, Joan would be dead.
Deborah sends me this note.
My mom was a breast cancer survivor. She had a double mastectomy two and half years ago. She had her gall bladder removed one and half years ago. She had a total knee replacement the year she died. I thought that since she came through all of that, we were going to have her around forever. My family moved here from California six years ago. We bought a big house so that my mom could live with us and be our nanny. My son, Austin, and her really bonded and were very close. She picked him up from school every day. She volunteered at his school from first grade to fifth grade and was known as “Grandma Joan” to the entire school. The day she died, was my son’s class holiday party. She was there at the party and got to speak with many of the teachers and parents that had come to know her. She called me and told me what a wonderful day she had. The next call I got was telling me that she had been in a very bad accident and that she and my son were taken to Skyline hospital and that I should hurry.
My mother was dead and my son was injured.
According to first responders on the scene, Joan Bennett had a medical situation while driving a mile from her home. She lost control of her tiny car and veered off the road, striking an NES pole.
Three months pass. Winter grey skies will begin to yield to warmer days and the renewal of spring.
The family tells me it is finally beginning to feel closure.
Then the letter from NES arrives.
The letter addressed to the dead woman is terse at best.
It essentially indicates that the 73-year-old hit an NES phone pole and she now owes the power company for the damage.
“Getting this bill in March just opened a healing wound. I really wanted to send NES a bill because their pole killed my mother, but I didn’t know how much to charge for her life,” Deborah will write me.
Her words are heart filled and thought provoking.
Getting the letter sends serious sticker shock through Deborah’s home.
Deborah tells me that it is unbelievable that NES wants money to fix the pole that killed her mother.
The thought of paying for the pole she so closely associates with the death of her mother was as shocking as hitting on 20 and pulling an ace.
It’s just not something you think you’ll ever see.
“It was an accident,” the woman says, clutching her son on the front stoop of their Goodlettsville home.
The bill is for an astronomical $14,493. The labor alone is more than $12,000.
“That’s outrageous,” Deborah’s husband Phil Barnes spews. “$12,000 in labor to replace a wooden pole is outrageous to me!!”
“I was very shocked. I couldn’t believe what it was saying. I got a bill for a pole that my mother hit and was killed from and the bill was almost $15,000. I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was a rip off. I kept looking at it. I kept saying, ‘Is this some kind of a joke?’,” Deborah asked with a touch of anger in her voice.
“It was not personal. It was matter of fact. And by the way, send this to your insurance company and they will pay it. I was very surprised and shocked. It was an accident. Why send someone a bill for the accident? Why is it so outrageously expensive? Why is it you turn it into your insurance company and it takes care of it? That is why our insurance rates are so high. Pass the buck… Don’t give a darn that someone gave their life,” she adds.
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