Jordan Mayor Casey Brim Apologizes for Water Bill Notices Sent in Error as Village Corrects a $10,661 Metering Mistake

Jordan Mayor Casey Brim signed a one page apology on August 3 to every water customer in his village of 1,192 people, telling them to disregard the late payment reminders that landed in mailboxes at the end of July. “This was sent in error,” Brim wrote on village letterhead from the office at 7 Mechanic Street. The village, he explained, does not send late notices or payment reminders at all.

The letter closes a messy month for water billing in the western Onondaga County village, where a failed meter at 150 North Main Street generated a bill of $10,661.71 that the village board cut to $143.66 on July 13, and where trustees approved up to $15,000 for new meter reading equipment in the same sitting. All of it is unfolding while contractors tie the village into a new joint water system that three municipalities are building with more than $18 million in state financial assistance.

Brim’s letter spells out how water billing in Jordan actually works. The only letter a village resident should ever receive about a water account comes at the end of the fiscal year, when any unpaid water and sewer charges are levied onto the property tax bill. The village “will not shut off water service due to no payment for Village customers,” Brim wrote. Whoever mailed the reminder notices, in other words, invented a threat that does not exist for village residents.

The rules are different outside the village line. Customers in the Town of Elbridge permissive area, who buy their water from the Village of Jordan, can receive a delinquency notice and possibly a shutoff notice, Brim wrote, because the village cannot levy unpaid water charges onto Town of Elbridge tax bills. For those customers, the mailing was not an empty threat, which is part of why the confusion spread.

Brim did not soften the internal review to come. “This lapse in judgement will be addressed with the Water/Sewer billing department and will not happen again,” he wrote, adding, “I sincerely apologize for the confusion and the unnecessary fear of your water service being interrupted.” He invited questions directly to [email protected] or the village office at (315) 689-7350.

The apology reads differently once you have seen the July 13 board minutes. Brim was absent that night, and Deputy Mayor Mark Gustafson ran the meeting at Village Hall. Gustafson asked the board to correct three water accounts whose meters had failed. The property at 150 North Main Street would have been billed $10,661.71; the board estimated actual usage at $143.66. A second account at 5873 Hamilton Road registered zero usage and was estimated at $94.73. A third at 5750 Hamilton Road, also stuck at zero, was estimated at $54.43. Trustee Timothy Stapleton moved the corrections, Trustee Joshua Bates seconded, and the vote was unanimous. The minutes note the failed meters will be replaced.

The board then bought itself a modernization path. Gustafson requested approval of a Neptune 360 meter reader and software package at a cost not to exceed $15,000, and the board passed it unanimously on a Stapleton motion seconded by Trustee Karen Simko. Neptune 360 is a cloud based meter reading platform; paired with new meters, it is designed to make the kind of runaway estimate that hit North Main Street visible before a bill ever prints.

The billing stumble is a small piece of a much larger rebuild. The Village of Jordan, the Village of Elbridge and the Town of Elbridge share a water system supplied by the City of Syracuse, and state regulators catalogued its problems bluntly in a 2023 environmental review: small diameter and dead end water mains, asbestos cement and galvanized steel pipe, insufficient fire flows and low chlorine residuals. The Village of Elbridge, acting as lead agency, issued a negative declaration for the joint improvements project in a notice published July 19, 2023 in the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Environmental Notice Bulletin.

The fix is expensive. The New York State Environmental Facilities Corporation board approved the financing package announced March 12, 2022: the Town of Elbridge received $2,686,259 in short term interest free financing plus $5,372,516 at market rate, the Village of Elbridge received $1,748,602 interest free plus $3,497,204 at market rate, and the Village of Jordan received $2,697,199 in interest free financing plus a $3,000,000 Drinking Water State Revolving Fund grant. The scope covers roughly 51,000 linear feet of new watermain, new storage tanks, new pump stations at the Syracuse connection and Hamilton Road, a new chlorine booster station on Jordan Road, and consolidation of the Champions Mobile Home Park water system in the town.

Residents got a reminder of the stakes on November 22, 2024, when the Onondaga County Health Department issued a boil water order for the Villages of Jordan and Elbridge and parts of the Town of Elbridge after a chlorination equipment malfunction in the Syracuse supply left the system with inadequate disinfection. The county told residents to boil tap water for one minute before drinking, brushing teeth, washing dishes, preparing food or making ice, and warned that bacteria readings might not return to safe levels for three days.

Construction is now deep into the village itself. Fred DiRisio, the project representative who reports to the Jordan board, said on July 13 that contractor Highlander is starting to tie in all water services on the new water main, and that the Brutus water tower has been certified. The work has left marks. Resident Chris Peters came to the meeting asking when equipment damage to the pavement at Delhi and Main streets would be repaired; Gustafson answered that restoration for the water project has not yet begun.

The money is moving too. Clerk and Treasurer Tina Trapp reported Abstract #3 that night at $319,075.23, and the largest single piece was $258,815.64 on the line the minutes record as Water Ban, the village’s short term borrowing account for the water project. The general fund claimed $23,616.15, sewer $21,180.01, the village pool $10,544.82 and water operations $3,047.71. The board approved the abstract unanimously.

Sewer work is stacking up behind the water project. On April 13, 2026 the Board of Trustees adopted a bond resolution authorizing a sewer system reconstruction project at a maximum estimated cost of $1,300,000, backed by up to $1,300,000 in serial bonds with a stated period of probable usefulness of thirty years. The resolution is subject to permissive referendum under Section 9-900 of the Village Law, and the village classified the work as a Type II action not subject to SEQRA review.

A second, far larger sewer plan is wobbling. Brian Skidmore of engineering firm Barton and Loguidice told the board on July 13 that the estimate for the joint sewer project with the neighboring Town of Brutus had climbed from $27 million to $32 million by the end of May after a revised engineering report tied to the SPDES permit and a change at DEC. Skidmore suggested the village email the Environmental Facilities Corporation to withdraw until the next round of grants becomes available, a candid acknowledgment that the current numbers do not work.

The board is also watching its own labor. Stapleton asked that all village water, sewer and public works employees who spend time working in the Village of Elbridge document their hours and the details of what was done, a bookkeeping discipline that matters when three municipalities share one system and its costs. On the operations side, Water Operator Williams reported that usage was up, driven mostly by the village pool and hot weather, and that all bacteriological samples came back good.

None of this has stopped the village from tending the identity that built it. The original Erie Canal opened through Jordan in 1825 along what is now Clinton and Mechanic streets, and the village incorporated a decade later, in 1835. Trustee Simko told the board on July 13 that she and a helper were picking up dirt, stone and bushes that week to finish the plantings around the Erie Park sign and flagpole, and that she would post an offer of $100 for a school student to repaint the canal boat that mounts on the front of the park pavilion. The canal still pulls a crowd through town: a canal bike ride rolled through on Wednesday, July 15, greeted, as usual, by Boy Scouts selling hot dogs.

Jordan has new plumbing for information, if not yet for water. The village launched its TextMyGov notification service on July 1, 2026. Residents can text JORDANNY to 91896 for one way alerts about events, road closures, meetings and emergencies, or use the two way line at (315) 689-4999 to report problems with keywords that include pothole, street light, missed pickup and, fittingly, no water.

There are places to take questions in person. The Board of Trustees meets the second and fourth Monday of each month at 7 p.m., and the three municipal boards hold a joint meeting on the Municipal Water Project on the third Tuesday of each month at 9 a.m., which puts the next joint session on August 18, 2026. Between now and then, the village office on Mechanic Street is running summer hours, and the replacement meters promised on July 13 are the first hard test of whether the next bill that reaches 150 North Main Street reads $143.66 instead of $10,661.71.