City apologizes for water shut off to paid-up users Alarge number of paid up Pleasant Pleas-ant Grove water users had their water shut off last Wednesday and the city has apologized for the error. er-ror. Mayor David Holdaway said that as a result of the mistake the city council will be asked to formulate a new review policy for the shutoff list so that this will not happen again. City Recorder Charmaine Childs said that the whole chain of events began because of a misprinted bar code on the payment return envelope enve-lope that was sent to customers with their June billing. In June the city changed over to a new envelope billing from the postcard-type it had used for years. The new billing included an envelope enve-lope for the residents to use to return their payment. An independent company provides pro-vides and stuffs the envelopes for the billing and inadvertently the Orem bar code was placed on the return envelopes. The codes are read electronically in the post office. of-fice. Mrs. Childs said that the Pleasant Pleas-ant Grove Post Office had noticed the wrong code was on some of the envelopes when they came in. The post master then asked his postal employees to watch for these envelopes enve-lopes and route them to the city rather than to Orem. Orem City was also notified so that they could send those back which did not get stopped in Pleasant Pleas-ant Grove. However, Mrs. Childs noted that some of the payment envelopes are apparently "in limbo" and have not arrived at the city hall yet. She urged all of those who have not received their checks back from the bank to fill out a tracer form at the post office. When the monthly shutoff time approached the computer printed out a shutoff list which listed all those who had not had their payments pay-ments recorded for the past nearly two months. Although the list was longer than usual, it was not re- checked, Mrs. Childs said. Water crews were sent out to turn off the water of those on the list and it was not longbefore water users began calling the city to find out why. A quicl follow up by one user, who had checked with her bank and learned that her water pay ment check had not returned and who then called the post office, resulted in the city being able to tie it in with the improper bar code and immediately stopped the shut-offs. shut-offs. The crews went right back and turned the water on for those who had been unnecessarily shutoff. Mayor Holdaway said that from now on the city council will review the shutoff lists. The remaining payment return envelopes have had the bar code blocked out on them so that there will be more problems with the envelope. Pleasant Grove is not large enough to have a bar code. Mayor Holdaway said he wanted the water users to know what had happened and he expressed a heartfelt heart-felt apology to all those who were inconvenienced by this shutoff.