City of West Bend Fleecing Citizens

Last week, I awoke and on a trip into the laundry room to find some socks, my nostrils were filled with the smell of natural gas.  It wasn’t incredibly strong, but obviously a problem.  I shut off the gas and opened the windows to air it out.  Then I called the gas company so that they could come out and find the problem.  The WE Energies gas guy was great.  He found the major leak (the lead line for the pilot light on our hot water heater) and fixed it right away.  He then proceeded to check the entire system just to be sure.  He found a minor leak in another coupling.  It was tiny and he said that it could have been leaking for years and nobody would have noticed.  He tried to fix it, but couldn’t, so we were told to have it repaired as soon as we could - no hurry, though. 

Well, our basement is finished with a couple of bedrooms in which some of our kids sleep, so we weren’t going to wait.  We called a plumber to get it fixed as soon as possible.  We were also due for a new hot water heater anyway, so we decided to have it replaced at the same time to save another trip charge.  We also decided to get a bigger hot water heater because we have four kids who insist on being clean and a daddy who likes his long showers. 

The plumber that we called is our favorite plumber.  They have been good to us in the past and they are always our first call (Bayer plumbing).  They asked us what we needed done and quoted a price.  One of the questions that they asked is whether or not we lived in the City of West Bend.  We do, so they told us that the city charges a $65 fee to replace our hot water heater.  Being the good capitalists that we are, we called around to get another quote to make sure that we were getting a good deal.  We were again asked about our residency and informed that the city charges a $65 fee.  As it turns out, Bayer had the best deal so we went ahead with them.

Bayer came out this afternoon and dutifully installed our new hot water heater, fixed the gas leak, capped a couple of gas lines that we don’t use, took a look at our two bathtub fixtures to see about replacing them, and told us that his next trip should be to replace our water softener.  The plumber was polite, professional, informative, and generally terrific - as usual.  Then he told us that a city inspector would have to come out to inspect our new hot water heater - hence the $65 fee. 

After thinking about it, it seems pretty clear that the $65 fee is a total scam to pump more money into the city’s coffers.  First off, if it was truly a matter of safety, the city inspector should have had to inspect the new hot water heater before it went into operation.  Given that the city seems perfectly fine waiting days or weeks before inspecting it, it’s clearly not about our safety.  Second, there is a reason that we have “certified” plumbers.  The purpose of the certification is to make sure that the plumbers do quality work.  If the plumber is certified, what purpose is there for an additional inspection by the city?  Third, why is it only the City of West Bend that imposes this fee?  Is there a substantial difference in safety between hot water heaters installed in West Bend versus the Village of Jackson, Town of West Bend, Town of Wayne, or anywhere else? 

Our plumber did a great job, but the City of West Bend is fleecing the citizens with a purposeless fee - unless the purpose is merely to pump more money into the City of West Bend.