Trailer park residents have water shut off by city despite paying bills

A trailer park community in Alexandria has been without water since Monday after it was shut off by the city. That’s because the Park Place Community owners owe nearly $100,000 in unpaid water utilities. IPR’s Thomas Ouellette reports.

Residents of the trailer park have been paying their utility bills on time. They even showed the mayor’s office proof of the payments.

Alexandria Economic Development Director Alan Moore said, while residents were paying the cost of utilities to the property owners, the owners were not paying that money to the city.

“When they’ve reached the amount of money that they’ve reached, which I believe is like $97,000, a small city like Alexandria cannot sustain that,” said Moore. ”So, the mayor went out and did notifications to the residents and turned off the water.”

Moore said the city made multiple attempts to reach the property owners before the water was shut off, but they never received a reply. 

Angela Chatman has lived at Park Place for 15 years. She said Alexandria Mayor Todd Naselroad told her the owners of Park Place have to pay at least $50,000 before the water utility can be turned back on.

“It’s just putting a big problem on everyone.” she said. “There’s people with leukemia in this trailer park. There’s people with kids. You know, it’s just a big hassle.”

Chatman said in her time living at Park Place, she has never missed a utility payment and being punished for the error of the property owners makes her feel overlooked.

“It feels like we don’t matter, because we’ve already paid for it, but yet we’re the ones that are suffering,” Chatman said. “They’re making us suffer when we’re not the ones that are at fault.”

The owners of Park Place Communities reached out to the residents and told them they are working on getting the water back on.

The city of Alexandria is supplying residents with bottled water for the time being.

According to Moore, the Park Place trash pickup has also been canceled. However the city is sending their own disposal to the community to stand in for them.

Thomas Ouellette is our reporter and producer.  Contact him at thomas.ouellette@bsu.edu