Goochland utilities collection $8,901 short

Goochland County has collected all but $8,901 of the $197,224 in utility checks the county failed to deposit during the past six years.

Randy Fralin says he isn't cutting another one just yet.

Fralin received a letter from the county two weeks ago asking for $2,501 -- the amount he tried to pay when water was hooked up to his house on River Road in 2003.

"We were moving into this house and spending tons of money and I was writing checks left and right and this was just one of many," he said. "I guess you could say it just got lost in the shuffle."

Years later, he says the money's just not there anymore.

"I'm incredulous that they would even ask for it," he said. "These are self-inflicted wounds the county has created. I didn't create this problem, and the bottom line is that I don't have the money. I'm like everybody, I lost my butt in the stock market and things are tough. I don't have donations just laying around."

As the result of an audit in November, the county has found 65 undeposited checks dating as far back as 2003. Checks ranging from $9 to $40,200 have been reissued by customers.

Myrtis Quarles, the county's director of finance, said most customers promptly reissued checks.

"They replaced them, I guess, because they knew they owed them," she said. "Pretty much everybody understands the situation."

The county is making arrangements with the remainder on a case-by-case basis.

Fralin said he shouldn't have to pay a bill from November 2003 in February 2008.

"It's rather absurd coming back right after Christmas, right at tax time, and with the economy where it is," he said. "I don't feel like it's my problem."

At $4,200, Jodi Duffy, owner of JavaJodi's Coffee Café near the courthouse, owes the biggest chunk of the balance from charges in 2006 when she was opening her business. She said she noticed additional money at the time but chalked it up to a fortuitous math error and used the money for startup costs.

She will begrudgingly shell out the money to the county next week.

"Nobody has extra money right now, but that's just the way it is," she said. "I can't do anything about it."

In the aftermath of the audit, the county's utilities department director and one other employee were dismissed late last year. County Administrator Gregory K. Wolfrey resigned Feb. 1, months earlier than previously announced.

The Board of Supervisors appropriated up to $50,000 last week for a forensic audit of the county's utilities department to look more deeply into how the money was overlooked. The probe could be under way as soon as early next month.

E-mail correspondence shows that the county's treasurer made the former utilities director and county administration aware of the checks starting in 2004.

Contact Wesley P. Hester at (804) 649-6976 or .