A woman who sold her wedding rings to have her sewer line reconnected should not be refunded the $500 fee, the Cortez Sanitation District board decided Tuesday night.

"We’re responsible to our constituents to see that people pay the bills for the services that are rendered," board chairman Stan Pierce told two advocates for the disabled who had come to discuss the woman’s situation.

"We are not a relief organization, we’re an organization that takes care of people’s sewers. If they don’t pay their bills, we have one way to take care of that and that’s to cut their sewers off."

Larry Wales, director of the Durango-based Southwest Center for Independent Living, and Maxine Carton, the center’s independent-living coordinator in Cortez, had come to the meeting to talk about the sanitation district’s policies and to seek a refund of the $500 reconnection fee the woman had paid.

Carton read the board a letter describing the woman’s plight. The woman, who spoke to the Journal on Thursday, has asked that her name not be publicized because her employer at her part-time job forbids employees from being involved in public issues.

The woman, her husband, and their teenage son were doing fine and had a solid income until March 2000, Carton said, when the husband suffered a stroke. He had to be transferred to Grand Junction, where he had brain surgery.

"They were away from home over six weeks," Carton said. "It took all of their resources."

When they returned, the husband had been left permanently disabled because his short-term memory had been severely damaged. Facing "a huge pile of bills," the woman attempted to get matters in order, but had difficulty organizing things while coping with the demands of a husband that required constant watching and frequent trips to the doctor, a son having trouble in school, and a father-in-law in ill health.

The woman, who could not attend Tuesday’s meeting, told the Journal that in December 1999 she forgot to make her quarterly payment of $42 to the sanitation district and planned to pay for two quarters at once in March. But that was when her husband had his stroke.

In May or July of 2000, she said, she wrote a check to the sanitation district for $85 and one to Greeley Gas for $17.49. However, she accidentally sent each check to the other company’s address. The bank cleared the check for $85 to Greeley even though it wasn’t made out to that company, she said.

That gave her a credit with Greeley but left her with a debt to the sanitation district that she didn’t have the money to pay, she said.

Around Jan. 15, 2001, she received a disconnect notice by certified mail from the sanitation district, telling her she had to pay her bill — by then a total of $116.28 — in full within 45 days. She sent a personal check for $60 with a note saying she would pay the rest in March.

"I just sent the letter back to them with a note that said my husband had had a stroke and I was having a heck of a time getting back on track," she said. She didn’t write down the balance that remained.

When she heard nothing and the check cleared, she assumed the arrangement was acceptable and waited for another bill to come so she could pay it. "I kept thinking I’d call them and find out what the balance was but I was so stressed for time," she said. "It just seemed like things kept coming up and coming up."

But on March 15, a backhoe operator showed up at the home with no notice, she said.

Sanitation officials dispute that contention, saying while there was no further written notice, their office manager placed a "courtesy call" to the family a few days before the disconnection warning them it was about to occur.

The woman, however, said she received no such call and she doesn’t believe her husband, did, either, because it never showed up on their Caller ID. Their phone number is not in the book.

On Thursday, sanitation-district manager Bill Smith said it was his understanding that a call had been made to the family and that the office manager might have found the phone number on a check.

On the day of the disconnection, the woman said, she had run out to help a co-worker fix a flat tire when the backhoe operator showed up. Her husband asked what was happening and tried to stop the operator, saying the family would pay the bill, but the operator "rudely said no," Carton told the district board.

But district superintendent Jay Conner said the line had already been cut at that point, and that operators cannot accept payments anyway. He added that he had been the person that operated the backhoe and "there was no rudeness to this person whatsoever. . . . I am not a rude person and I do not tolerate it in my employees."

The family now faced a $500 reconnection fee on top of the unpaid bill. Furthermore, their water had been cut off by the city, as is standard procedure when a sewer line is cut for lack of payment.

For several days, the family made trips to their daughter’s house a short distance away to wash dishes, take showers, and use the bathroom.

Carton, who’d been contacted by the woman on advice from the health department, was working to get help from area agencies when the woman called and said the problem had been taken care of.

"I said, ‘Where’d you get the money?’ and she said, "Well, I sold my rings’."

"Something had to be done," the woman told the Journal. "It was ridiculous. My husband — he doesn’t have a memory — he kept asking, ‘How come I can’t go to the bathroom? Why did they turn the water off?’"

At Tuesday’s meeting, Carlton told the board members they should return the $500 fee. "If you guys are lucky enough and nothing happens in your family so you’re not put in this situation, that’s wonderful," she said. "But this is one family it did happen to."

However, Smith told the board, the district has a procedure, set by state statute, by which persons can request a hearing before a hearing officer and seek more time to pay their bill. The procedure is described on the disconnection warning notice.

"The (family) chose not to avail themselves of that hearing process," Smith said. "They had 45 days to scribble a note from the time of the notice."

Wales, the Southwest Center’s director, said he was concerned about whether the district’s policy might be harming disabled individuals, particularly those that might not understand a written disconnection notice. But Smith said the district probably does only about eight disconnections a year and most are at abandoned houses.

The board later voted 5-0 not to refund the $500 fee. The members noted that, if the family’s sewer line should be disconnected again within a five-year period, they will face a $4,000 fee under a new district policy.

Smith said Thursday that the $500 fee is necessary to recoup the district’s costs for two or three persons working on a disconnection and reconnection, materials, and amortization on the backhoe. He said the district has no special policy regarding disconnections at homes with disabled persons.

He said physically disconnecting the lines is necessary because city officials have told him they will not shut water off to a home just because the sewer bills haven’t been paid.

Some area agencies came through with several hundred dollars for the family after the fact, according to Carlton, and it has been credited to their account with the sanitation district.

But the rings, which were sold to a private individual, can’t be recovered, she said.

The woman said Thursday she hadn’t expected charity, just some leniency from the sanitation district.

"I wasn’t asking anybody to pay my bills," the woman said. "I know I’m responsible and I know that I should have written" and asked for the hearing. "If they would have come up here and left a notice on my door — anything. I had thought, when I sent them a payment and they accepted it, that everything was cool."