Unpaid Water Bill Deficit in Moss Point

The City of Moss Point continues to investigate unpaid water bills that left the city’s utilities department with a $3.4 million deficit.
According to city officials, this is a result of questionable behavior from two former city employees. The two employees allowed customers to make small cash payments in exchange for keeping their service up and running. After accepting small cash payments, the two employees would then void out the receipt they’d give to customers. Unless the customer kept the receipt there was no actual paper trail of the transaction.
In other cases, they would allow customers to open up an account at a new address without paying the outstanding debt from the old address.
When the city realized the multi-million dollar deficit, they reported it to both the district attorney’s office and the state auditor’s office.
Moss Point resident Chris McNally said, “All the budget information needs to go to the public as soon as it can so that we know what’s going on. I don’t know the employees that were released, but I think that’s certainly something that needs to happen when there’s anything unusual”
The two employees resigned after talk of termination from upper management in the beginning of the year.
Only a few people have been cited and fined for their wrongdoings, but Moss Point Mayor Billy Broomfield expects that to change after the investigation is finished.