The Perla Water Association has come before the bankruptcy court filing a chapter 9 Bankruptcy # 6:19-bk-71447.

They were to form a board to make a plan to bring the association into current standing with their debtors. We, the members of the Perla Water Association, were not allowed any input into the board appointments or of the plan decided upon until we received a letter in the mail telling us the court ordered a $15 dollar a month fee, in addition to our regular water bill and that non-payment would result in shut off with a $50 reconnect fee. ($25 reconnect is normal in surrounding water associations).

At this point, we requested a meeting with the Perla officials and were told they would hold a conference call. In the conference call held 3/6/21 at 12 noon, we were read the items which needed to be taken care of with the debtors and told that they would be voting tomorrow 3/7/21 to approve and send it to the bankruptcy court. The Perla Water Association water users were not given any notice that board members were being appointed and who they were. The board members set the fee, not the court as we were led to believe. We asked repeatedly who the members were and Mayor Adams refused to give us names. We still do not know.

We were also notified in this call that the water metered coming from the main debtor, Malvern Water Works, was 9 million gallons per month, but all that was being metered through the Perla meters was 1.1 million gallons. This is a loss of 7,990,000 gallons.

This means that there are major leaks, or that there is grave mismanagement of the System since 2017 in the reading of meters. Many of the members expressed that their meters have not been read in months.

It was expressed in the conference call that this was a 7 year plan to pay off debtors, however, this does not account for the repair of lines leaking or meters broken to bring the system back to a workable solution. Are they planning another increase for the repair?

The Mayor sited multiple water line breaches while workers were running other lines for some of the water leakage, which it true. However some of us have requested marking thru the #811 system and Perla water would never mark the lines, thus we had to guess the position of the lines. This being said, if the lines are not marked, the contractors running other lines can not be held responsible for the breaches. But neither should the water users.

If a water increase is needed, it should be in the form of price of water used, not a fee for mismanagement. And a plan for repair should also be expressed.